


Atlas, Rise

by theidealego



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Alcoholic Dean Winchester, Bad Parent John Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bottom Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Angst, Dean Winchester Character Study, Dean Winchester Whump, Dean Winchester in Heaven, Dean Winchester in Hell, Dean Winchester is Sam Winchester's Parent, Dean Winchester's First Time, Emotionally Repressed Dean Winchester, F/M, Freudian Elements, Homophobic John Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Original Character(s), Outdoor Sex, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Promiscuous Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Sexual Assault, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, Teenage Dean Winchester, The Dean/John is not really Dean/John, just Dean/a creature taking John's form
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-06-17 06:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 41,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15455451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theidealego/pseuds/theidealego
Summary: Sam and Dean are taking a break from angel drama, ready to get back to a good, old-fashioned hunt. But when Sam finds a case in the Appalachian Mountains, he has no idea Dean's hunted the same creature before. What happened to Dean in those woods when he was almost fourteen is something neither Dean nor John ever spoke about. But now, with their father long dead and the monster still on the loose, it's all coming back.Dean has a choice to make. Will he reveal the truth to Sammy and endure the moment when the admiration in his brother's eyes turns to pity? Or will Dean face his oldest demon alone?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with sexual violence, including the sexual assault of a young teenager. If that isn't something you want to read, this isn't the fic for you. That said, to those of you who you take the time to read, thank you! And if you're enjoying this fic, please comment and let me know. Your engagement with the story motivates me to write more!
> 
> Also, like I said in the tags, there IS a bit of Dean/John in this story, but only in the sense that a shape-shifting creature uses John's form to try to control/intimidate Dean. While the relationship between the real John and Dean (conveyed through flashbacks) is certainly abusive/unhealthy, it will not be overtly sexual in this fic.

 

"Overload: the martyr stumbles.  
Hit the ground and heaven crumbles.  
All alone, the fear shall humble.  
Swallow all your pride."

-"Atlas, Rise!" Metallica

 

***

 

Dean remembers the exact moment his life shrank from the size of the American Midwest to a grain of salt.

It happened such a long time ago that the images have the distant feel of a movie. A horror movie. The kind of movie where it’s easier to look away.  

Most of the time he doesn’t think about that night. Most of the time he doesn’t have to. But this hunt is different. It’s all coming back.

Closing the book he’d been pretending to read, Dean leans back in his chair, rocks onto the wobbly back feet. By the time he tunes out the shuffling of pages, the quiet coughs and cleared throats, it’s already playing behind his closed eyes. Darkness, pitch black and damp. Buzzing summer air. Sticky heat and the sickly motor sound of his heart racing in his ears.

They’re his own memories, but he can’t seem to get a grip on them. Something distant and numb insists the kid in the dark isn’t him at all. It’s someone else—some other kid he’d met but didn’t know very well. A story he’s heard through the grapevine. Some other hunter’s nightmare.

But that’s stupid. The kid he’d been before that night, that other Dean Winchester—he’d existed. There’d been that strange, naive thirteen-and-a-half year old version of Dean, once, a long time ago. That Dean had sauntered past men mowing their lawns and figured he was looking at himself a decade forward. That Dean had been a boy, not a man. But he’d been John Winchester’s son. He’d been real.

 _Real stupid._ Dean lets the front feet of his chair come to rest on the ground with a thud. Across the wide yellow room, a coiffed, middle-aged woman glares. Sam’s too absorbed in research to notice. Dean remembers why he hates public libraries.

 _But I was a kid_. He has to keep reminding himself of that. _Just a regular kid, no matter how bad Dad wanted a soldier._ And when it comes to believing, Dean knows kids are pros.  Lots of things they believe without ever being told. Take monsters, for example. Adults find a way to deny what’s right in front of them, but children fear on instinct, like they know all the bad in the world from the get-go. They’ll buy into an urban legend, no questions asked. Startle at a shadow. It’s not hard planting fear in soft ground like that.

_Couple good ghost stories’ll do it. God knows I heard more than my fair share. Saw the truth with my own eyes._

But ghosts and monsters were just one side of the coin. The Impala’s shiny windows told stories, too. Riding in the back seat with Sammy’s head on his lap, Dean had developed a blind trust in the America behind the glass— started falling in love with the streaks of life blurring by without even knowing what he was doing. Smudged cities. Fields of rippling grain. Towns where people waved to each other at the crosswalks. He drank it all in, just like any kid would. Neon diners. Lipstick smiles. The smell of new pencils. The rowdy energy of a yellow school bus. Suits and ties and sundresses. Billboards and office parks. In hindsight, there was no getting around it. He’d bought the apple pie life America dangled in front of him before he’d been old enough to think it all through—bought it wholesale, in spite of anything his father did or said.

John could uproot the growing seed, but he couldn’t crush it. If anything, life on the road gave Dean a wider bed of lies to choose from. Sure, he’d never known a real home. Not since the night of the fire. But crappy motel rooms still got cable, and on TV everybody was a doctor or a lawyer. Everyone lived in a house on a street called Mulberry or some numbered big city avenue. Someday, Dean Winchester knew he’d be what everyone else was. He’d do what everyone else did. Teachers looked at him and assumed it. Strangers passing on the street saw no difference between Dean and any other boy. He could be anything. He had a choice.

Until he didn’t.

When the time came and he finally saw it all clearly, the loss tore into him like the blast from a shotgun. There’d been a time of grief. Even back then, though, he’d played things close to the chest. Probably, no one had ever figured it out.

Opening his eyes, Dean turns to Sam.

“Hey. What’d I wanna be when I grew up, Sammy?”

Sam’s eyebrows knit at the interruption, but he looks up from his tome on Hungarian folklore anyway.

“Uh, I don’t know. Cowboy?”

“Come on, man. That’s not a job.”

“I don’t know, dude,” Sam sighs. “Didn’t you basically want to be Dad?”

“Yeah,” Dean shrugs. “I guess.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Nothing. You getting anywhere with that?” Dean nudges the heavy book. It’s open to the Gs, Sam’s finger stuck on a line about guta.

“Not really. These guys do some nasty work, but they’re all about bludgeoning people to death. No blood-sucking.”

“I still say you’re making this way too complicated. It’s a vampire. Has to be.”

“Not a vamp.” Sam flips a few pages without looking up. He’s in the J’s now. “Wrong type of fang marks, and whatever this was, it didn’t drain the victim or turn him. Plus there’s the whole “dead wife” thing. Vamps can’t shapeshift.”

Dean clears his throat. “We sure that symbol was Hungarian?”

Sam nods without looking up. “Yeah, man. Why?”

“No reason.”

Dean casts around for a distraction. There’s nothing. He taps his fingers on the table. Sam shifts his weight in his chair, turns another page.

_So he doesn’t know. Never noticed._

That summer, when the life-shrinking happened, Sam might as well have been Dean’s shadow. They’d spent their days in cotton boxers, lounging in front of the motel room’s AC unit, watching cartoons. Sam had been eight, maybe nine. Old enough to make his own ramen noodles. Dean remembers that—remembers digging out the first aid kit after Sam spilled a cup-o’-soup all over both their arms. Remembers the belting John had dished out after.

If Sam hadn’t figured out what was going on in Dean’s head, then nobody had. Definitely not John. John never would’ve figured Dean for the dreamer type. Looking at his elder son, John Winchester had only ever seen a copy of himself. Dean worshipped him back then, and John had known it. That a kid could worship more than one god at a time had probably never occurred to him. And afterward… well, he’d seen pain on Dean’s face, sure enough. He just hadn’t had the first clue what it really meant.

_What do you want to be when you grow up?_

The truth was, up until Dean was almost fourteen years old, he’d never had a set answer to the question. Like most kids, he hadn’t needed one.

Then one had been given to him. Not just given. Embedded. Not “What do you want to be?” but “What are you?” And after that day, the towns and people blurred together, no longer full of possibility. Just scenery. Dean understood the truth, then: the people in those small towns were as different from him as the monsters he fought to save them from. If anything, he had more in common with ghosts and vampires than he ever would with most human beings.

“I’m starving.” Dean slaps his hands down on the table, making the coiffed woman jump. He pushes back his chair.

“C’mon, dude. You just ate.”

“People eat more than once a day, Sammy. Didn’t they teach you that in college?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Can’t bring food in the library.”

“Good. This isn’t getting us anywhere. Time for a break.”

 _A long one_ , Dean tells himself hopefully. _Long enough he forgets about that book_.

“Grab me something,” Sam mutters, already flipping pages again. “I’ll eat it later.”

“Dude. Come on.”

“Dean. What’s your problem? I know you hate research, but we just got here. You know how long it takes to find this kind of stuff.”

“I friggin hate libraries,” Dean replies tersely. “What happened to googling this crap?”

“Already did. Too many creepypastas. Apparently Hungarian folk monsters are a thing. But if you wanna go that route, figure out what’s real and what’s fake, be my guest.”

Dean sighs. “C’mon, man. Last chance. There’s that place on Main with the onion rings.”

Sam doesn’t even look up. He’s in the L’s. Too close for comfort.

 _I could stay. Get us kicked out. Try some kind of distraction_.

But Dean already knows it won’t work. The harder he pushes Sam off the trail, the worse it’s going to get. After all the years hunting together, Sam can practically smell Dean’s reluctance, and once he’s got the scent, he won’t leave it alone. _Better to let him think I’m lazy. Let him figure out the lore best he can._ There’s always the chance Sam will get it wrong. Not much of a chance—not when he’s got his research face on—but it’s that or tell the whole damn story and feel the pity in Sam’s eyes once its told. That Dean can’t do.

Dean’s stomach rumbles on his way out, too loud in the quiet of the library. He’s relieved when he finally makes it out the door.

Once he’s peeled out of the parking lot, though, the hunger vanishes. Dean finds himself passing Patty’s Diner, Home of the World’s Largest Onion Ring. Instead, he’s headed for the campground a few miles outside town. It’s mountain country. Every time the Impala crests a hill, Dean cocks his ear for for signs of engine distress.

_You can do it, baby._

Dean tells himself she’s got new brakes, a new transmission, but he can’t drown out John’s voice. “Hard on the car,” was all he’d generally said when Dean pointed out a possible case in the Appalachians. John Winchester liked his roads straight and flat. Liked to see trouble coming a good way off.

Maybe that was why he’d taken it so hard. No matter how many times Dean went over what’d happened that night, he’d never been able to figure a different ending. At least, not for himself and his dreams. The old illusions would’ve fallen away sooner or later. It was probably better that way. The same harsh truth that’d broken his heart at thirteen had given him clarity, kept him alive all these years. But things with John had changed that night, too—fallen apart in a way Dean never figured how to repair. And maybe that had something to do with the way John hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe it’d shocked the compassion clean out of him.

 _Should’ve found a way to let him down easy._ _Gotten him used to the idea. Maybe then things would’ve been different._

But there’s no knowing, now. Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel. Popping in a cassette, he tries to drown out the thoughts and the sound of the struggling engine. The rage of Metallica fills the car.

When he finally reaches the campsite, there’s  no sign of a crime—no yellow tape, no cops. Nothing to indicate a man was attacked there just last week, drained almost dry.

Only the symbol carved into the wide trunk of a tulip tree remains as evidence. It looks a little bit like a tent, so that’s probably what hikers think it’s supposed to be. Dean studies the symbol, tracing the upside-down V, the line descending diagonally from its right fork. The carving’s deep, clean-cut. It’s the letter G in Old Hungarian script—something Sam figured out right away, back when they visited the site at the beginning of the week. He’s been researching Hungarian legends ever since, getting closer and closer to the truth about the creature they’re hunting.

But Dean already knows. He knows why the symbol’s there, too.

It marks the creature’s territory—a wide swatch of rough terrain stretching from the edge of town to the other side of the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s safe to be here now. Will be, until sundown. Still, in spite of the yellow heat filtering through the trees, Dean can’t suppress a shiver. He eyes the empty campsite with its blackened fire pit, notices how the rhododendron clings thick on three sides of the clearing, how the gravel road disappears around a bend. The attack happened mid-week, with no one around to see. Not another living soul for miles.

 Dean still can’t get the victim’s face out of his head. He’d been a hiker in his mid-thirties, chin hidden beneath a scraggly wilderness of beard. Everything he needed he’d carried with him in a bulging backpack, and he’d brought so little in the way of clothes that when they sat him down to talk about the rumors, he’d still been wearing the tattered red and gray flannel he’d worn the night of the attack.

Dean cringes to think about it even now—the way the man’s hands shook, the anemic look of his skin, the slow, disbelieving way he talked about what’d happened to him. Probably the worst part was the fact that he’d been attacked hiking the Appalachian Trail all the way from Maine to Georgia, trying to cope with the grief of his wife’s recent passing. When the creature got him, he’d been on the trail for months, and almost home.

To Dean, meeting the hiker’s empty eyes was like staring at the exposed, withered liver of an alcoholic, drink in hand. Too real. Too close.

So, while Dean made a show of flirting with the busty bartender, Sam had inspected the marks on the man’s neck and wrist, made him describe how the creature attacked, punctured, and drained him. That was all Sam had gotten out of the guy, though—the blood-drinking bit, and the fact that the “vampire” bore an uncanny resemblance to his recently deceased wife.

Surveying the campsite now, alone, Dean doesn’t want to picture what happened here, but his mind puts the pieces together anyway. There would’ve been a tent, the domed backpacking type through-hikers used. The guy had been asleep. Early hours of the morning. No moon. Cloud cover. Sensing weakness, the creature crawled in, its face and body and voice the spitting image of the dead wife. A perfect replica, down to the voice and gestures.

And even though the hiker’s story got vague after that, Dean knew what must’ve happened next. _Did he fight, once he came to his senses?_

When they’d interviewed him the day after the attack—three days ago, now—the guy hadn’t looked too banged up. Then again, he’d been wearing long sleeves, long pants. It’d been hard to tell how much of the story he’d been holding back, and for once, Dean hadn’t prodded. Not in front of Sam. Not if there was a chance the whole thing might blow over.

Dean glances around at the campsite again, wonders how far the human voice carries out here. He calls out, listens for a reply. The sound’s lost in the thick air without even an echo.

It’s backcountry— so far back you can’t even camp without a permit. The sound of far-off water washes over the sloped earth, drowning out the snapped twigs and rustling leaves that might give some warning to a man on his guard. There’s no point listening for danger here. Listen too hard, and the river starts to sound like low voices far away.

Dean remembers that—remembers another campsite all those summers ago, not this one, but not far away from it, either. Just a little further back, closer to the river.

Thinking about it leaves a weight on Dean’s chest heavier than a tractor trailer. Half of him wants to find the old campsite, relive it all and maybe finally be rid of it. But the other half, the smart half, knows that’s exactly what it wants. He’s prey here, even in daylight. The creature’s watching, sensing, learning everything there is to know about him. It’s here in the mist rising off the river, in the sparkling green after-rain of the trees. It wants him to stay up in these woods after dark, wants him caught up in memory, overwhelmed, full of regret. Helpless.

Slowly, like he’s waking from a dream, Dean shakes his head. Then he steps into the underbrush. He tells himself he’s not looking for the spot from that summer. He’s just looking for clues, snippets of the here and now. A stash. A lair. A favorite corner of the woods. Something to give them an advantage, just in case Sam figures out what they’re up against and the hunt starts for real.

There are clues everywhere, if you know what to look for. Dean’s already spotted the burnt, crushed foliage around the campsite and the uncanny hoof prints leading away where it ran, searching for cover before the sun came up. Earlier in the week, with Sam looking over his shoulder, he’d covered the tracks as best he could, kicking leaves over the prints so Sam wouldn’t see. Now he picks up the mangled trail, following.

He’s hoping he’ll find a pile of ash at the end of it, but there’s nothing.

“Guess it’s too much to hope you just offed yourself, Cinderella-style, huh?” he asks the empty air. There’s no reply.

Of course, Cinderella wouldn’t have turned into ash when her time was up. Just lost her pretty dress. And Cinderella had to be home by midnight. For this creature, the deadline’s dawn, and the stakes are higher.

By the time the sun rises, a liderc has to be enveloped in utter darkness, safe underground. Given how the creature can shrink down to the size of a leaf’s shadow, that kind of dark isn’t hard to find out here. Probably, this one’s got a whole network of old gopher’s tunnels to choose from. It could be anywhere. Could be under his feet right now. But it can’t do any harm, Dean knows. Not until dark.

Dean looks at his watch.

 _Four-o’-clock. Not bad_.

With hours of daylight left, he lets his feet carry him over the trails between campsites, always careful to mark the path for the return trip the way John taught him. At first, he finds nothing. Just empty campsites in varying states of disuse, a few smoked meat tins tossed into fire pits. Typical backpacker fare.

Then, poking at what looks like a snake but turns out to be an old shoelace in the middle of one campsite, Dean glances up and feels his stomach drop.

This is it.

It’s the same site they’d camped at that summer. This is the place it all happened.

Before all the images can come crashing down on him, Dean takes a deep breath. Then, deliberately, he looks around. Taking in the canopy of yellow-green leaves, the mountain laurel crowning the slope to one side of the clearing, he can’t shake the feeling he’s gone back in time.

 _Over there’s where Dad put the tent_. _There’s the trail to the stream where we got our water. Had to boil it before we could drink it_. Dean remembers the bug-repellent-and-woodsmoke smell of the camping gear they’d borrowed for the trip. _Might still be lying around somewhere, in some old storage unit. Maybe, when we finally get around to going through all Bobby’s stuff, we’ll find that same tent, that same old camp stove_. The thought makes Dean’s stomach do an unpleasant flip.

That hunt had been a game of cat and mouse. An exercise in strategy. And Dean had been the bait. The sacrificial pawn.

Looking back, Dean knows it was the only way. But still...Bobby would’ve been mad as hell. _Lucky for Dad he never found out. Would’ve been the breaking point between them, maybe. And then we would’ve been screwed_. In a way, though, the idea had come from Bobby. It’d been Bobby who educated John on the key points of liderc lore, and it’d been Bobby who issued the warning. Dean can almost hear the familiar cadence of Bobby’s outrage ringing in his ears, like it was yesterday it all happened, not decades ago.

“I know you think you know what you’re doing here. You’ve got that cocksure look you get. But think about the boys. You’d be an idjit, going after this one alone. A real idjit.”

“I don’t see a problem,” came John’s low voice in reply.

They’d been talking out in the yard, oblivious to Dean’s feet sticking out from under the far side of the Impala. Dean had been plenty old enough to know better. He should’ve clear his throat or slid out from under the car. Instead, he’d pulled his grease-stained hands out of the car’s undercarriage, resting them on his chest and lying perfectly still.

“Don’t you play dumb with me, Winchester” Bobby retorted. “Liderc prey on a man’s weakness. They take the form of a dead loved one, trying to lure you in. Sadder the memory, stronger the bastard gets. Now, just who do you suppose that creature’s gonna take the shape of, once it’s got you in its sights?”

Dean watched John’s feet stride toward the car, felt the trunk slam shut. It took him a moment to realize his father wasn’t going to answer Bobby’s question.

“Boys, get your asses out here,” John yelled instead. Then, to Bobby, “We’re leaving. I’ll have the stuff back when it’s done.”

“Well, if you haven’t just proved my point, I don’t know a vampire from a wendigo,” Bobby muttered. “If you can’t even talk about Mary, how exactly are you planning on—” but Bobby broke off as Sam’s small feet joined John’s large, steel-toed boots behind the car.

“Dean!” John roared again. Dean banged his head on the bumper in his rush to slide out from under the car. He could almost feel the heat when John’s glare found him.

“Get in the car. Buckle your brother in.”

And they’d left.

Later, once Sam was fast asleep, John had driven Dean a block away from the motel to some vacant, wooded lot and tanned Dean’s hide for eavesdropping. But after he’d put his belt back on and calmed down some, he’d almost looked relieved, like he was glad Dean had listened in after all.

“You heard what your Uncle Bobby said?”

It’d been a gruff question, aimed at Dean while he was still trying to stop his chin from wobbling. He remembers nodding.

“So you see the problem I’m up against?”

Dean nodded again—a short, quick nod, the kind his dad liked best. “The thing we’re hunting is a liderc,” he recited, looking into the night instead of at his father. “It takes the form of someone who died. And if you try to hunt it, it’s gonna turn into Mom. And that’ll make it stronger. Too strong to beat.”

“That’s right.” When Dean sneaked a glance at his father, John was gazing in the same offward direction Dean had been looking, brow thoughtful, jaw tense. “You don’t want that creature to hurt me, and maybe you and Sammy. Do you, son?”

Dean shook his head vehemently. Then John turned, gripping Dean’s skinny shoulder in one broad hand. He studied his son closely.

“You’re fifteen now?”

Dean remembers shrugging, figuring fifteen and thirteen-and-a-half weren’t that different, glad he seemed older than he was.

“Son, the thing about this monster is, it doesn’t just take the shape of any dead person. Bobby’s got all kinds of conflicting lore on this thing, but the best we can figure, the way it gets its power is by…” John clears his throat, “Well, by having sex with people and drinking their blood. So it takes the form of a former sexual partner, most times. Someone you miss. Someone with that kind of power over you. I guess you’re too young to—” John continued, looking sideways at Dean, but Dean interrupted.

“I’ve done it. Lots of times. I’m old enough.”

It was a lie, of course. There’d only been the one time, just weeks before. So new it was still sinking in. Painful, because of everything that had happened afterward. And even that hadn’t been sex. Not all the way.

But Dean couldn’t take the words back—not once John’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile.

“Okay, tiger. I’m going to need you to be a man on this hunt. Can you do that, Dean?”

Dean remembers nodding curtly again. John’s fingers dug into his shoulder, squeezed hard, released.

“Good. Good.”

_Good._

Dean’s eyes spring open. He didn’t realize he’d closed them. Alarmed to find himself sitting on a fallen tree trunk without having ever made a decision to sit, he stands up to pace the clearing again.

 _That’s how the son of a bitch gets you_ , he reminds himself. _Like a trance. Stuck in the past. Can’t get out, once you’re in_.

It shouldn’t be happening now, though. Not during the day. Still, Dean can’t shake a strange feeling. It’s the disturbing prickle of eyes on his back, combined with something else—a kind of rawness he hasn’t felt in a long time.

_Not since I was a kid. But can a liderc do that? Come on that strong, even during daylight hours?_

The thumping, uneven rhythm of his heart answers the question for him.

_Time to get the hell out of dodge._

He’s turning, looking for the trail he came in on, and that’s when he sees it—another trail, barely visible even to Dean’s expert eye, leading away from the river. _Leave now_ , the voice in the back of his head whispers, but he pushes it down. This could be something.

And it is. There, just a little ways off the campsite, nestled in the hollow of a lighting-struck tree, is a shrine.

That’s the first word Dean thinks of when he sees it. It’s orderly, colorful—a bouquet of neatly tied bows in various colors and patterns. Black canvas. Blue checkered cotton. The thin, synthetic material of someone’s orange tent. Most of the strands look old. They droop, rain spattered, against the tangle of twigs in the hollow, and Dean has to poke and prod to get a good look. But one stands out—a strip of bright red and gray flannel. It takes Dean a second to place it—then he remembers the hiker they’d interviewed, pictures the man pale and shaking in his only flannel shirt.

Dean draws his hand back, a wave of nausea sweeping over him.

 _They’re souvenirs. Tokens_.

Then something else, a feeling both sick and frantic, seizes him. Slowly, carefully, he pushes each bow aside, paying closer attention to color and pattern this time. He’s looking for something, now—giving only cursory glances to the ones it can’t be, closely inspecting the ones it could. When he finally spots what he’s looking for, though, it’s not alongside the other bows. It’s tied above them, in a smaller hollow he’d almost missed altogether.

A bow of brown leather.

Retching, Dean staggers into the brush beyond the hollow tree. Only once he’s emptied his stomach can he take another look. _I’m wrong_ , he tells himself. _I have to be. It’s been too long_. But there’s no way around it. The strip of brown leather hangs in a neat bow, protected by the tree, unmistakable.

Following on the heels of nausea, there’s the impulse to destroy—to flip open his lighter and reduce the shrine to ashes. His hand strays to his pocket, and only something Bobby said holds him back.

“Don’t make the damn thing angry,” he’d called out as John was pulling the jack out from under the car. He’d given John a chance to reply, which the man hadn’t taken. Then Bobby had muttered something like, “Not that you’ll listen to anything I say. What do I know?” and walked away.

John hadn’t listened, but Dean had. It’s warning enough to keep the lighter in his pocket.

_Fuck._

Dean doesn’t dare yell it. He feels the thing watching him. Waiting. Learning.

But he has to do something. Rage chokes him, the instinct to run following close on its heels. Dean learned a long time ago how to push that flight instinct down, so he does the only other thing he can do: he takes a swing at the tree with his fist.

 _Sturdier than it looks_ , he thinks, and then, knuckles bleeding, he heads back the way he came.


	2. Chapter 2

“I found it.”

That’s the first thing Sam says when Dean walks in the door. It’s late. Early morning, actually. Dean has a couple beers and some cheap whisky in him. If his stomach could drop any further at Sam’s words, it would, but right now everything’s just a shiny haze. Dean’s not sure if it’s the alcohol, or the relief he felt leaving the forest, or the fact he’s just spent an hour with a redheaded girl in a room three doors down. Probably all three.

“Hit me,” he groans, flopping face up onto the bed. “Whatcha got?”

“The thing we’re hunting is a liderc,” Sam begins. He sounds enthused, the way he always gets after successful research. “We were right about the symbol being Hungarian. Liderc are supposed to be demons, at least in Hungarian legends, but according to Bobby’s old stuff, they’re more like a cross between spirits and creatures. Related to vampires, incubi, succubi, that kind of thing, but less corporeal.”

“You went through Bobby’s journals?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, at first I didn’t know what to look for, so it wasn’t all that helpful.” Dean knows that’s an understatement. Before he died, Bobby had a system. The problem was, nobody else knew how Bobby’s system worked. Picking through his files was like trying to unravel the man’s brain. It was a friggin mess. “But once I found the name, it all fell into place,” Sam finishes.

“So, what are we looking at?” Dean’s trying to strike the right balance between his usual curiosity and the growing weight on his chest—the weight that’s saying _leave it alone_.

“Liderc are actually pretty rare in the US. Like, there’s only ever been a handful of sightings. But the lore’s pretty strong. Supposedly, a liderc hatches out of the first egg laid by a black hen. Bobby thinks it’s not all black hens, just one specific breed, or maybe even just hens from one specific, cursed genetic line.”

“Makes sense,” Dean nods, inspecting his scraped knuckles, which he’d forgotten about already. “Otherwise these things would be all over the place.”

“Right.”

“So they’re rare,” Dean summarizes blurrily, “but we’ve stumbled onto one of them. Something about a chicken. What else? How do we kill the sumbitch?”

“Slow down,” Sam smiles thinly. “I haven’t even told you what they do yet. Or, like, how to track them.”

“Right. Shoot.”

“Okay. So liderc are weird. Like, really weird. They take lots of different forms. People report seeing something they describe as a flaming bird, so apparently it can fly. But it leaves hoofprints, like a horse. And it can shapeshift.”

“So it’s some type of shifter?” Dean prompts, already knowing the answer.

“Not really.” Sam’s forehead wrinkles. “According to what Bobby wrote, at least the part I could make sense of, this thing doesn’t shed its skin. It’s more like it creates an illusion in your mind, based on your memories.”

“Memories of what?”

“It’s a who. Dead loved ones. People report seeing dead husbands, wives, lovers, stuff like that. But it gets weirder.”

This time Dean just waits.

“According to Bobby’s theory, liderc feed on emotions and sensations. They do it by drinking blood, and while they drink, they can feel the emotion of the person they’re drinking from. But it’s only good as long as you’re conscious and the emotion lasts, so they usually stop before you’re dead. That’s the good news.”

“Bad news?”

“The emotion they’re looking for is… uh… well, it’s orgasmic.”

Feeling Sam’s eyes on him, Dean gives an awkward, noncommittal “Huh.”

“Yeah. Or, more accurately, a liderc’s looking for a mix of as many different feelings and sensations as it can get. So pleasure’s a big hit with them, yeah, but also grief, fear, pain, guilt, regret, joy, love…” Sam trails off for a second, like he’s lost.

Dean rolls onto his side, studies his brother. “So it wants to make you feel everything it can, all at once, and drink your blood while you’re still feeling it?”

“Yeah. It, does that by… uh… making sexual advances, usually. And it’s not really interested in taking no for an answer. The more emotion it gets out of you, the stronger it gets. So people with past romantic losses are really vulnerable. Like our hiker.”

Dean stares hard at Sam. “Right. Which is why I’ll do this one solo.”

Immediately, Sam bristles.

“You think I couldn’t handle it if it turned into Jess?”

Dean scoffs. “I know you couldn’t. _You_ know you couldn’t.”

“But you’d be immune?”

Dean smirks. “I’ll just ask it to make me a virgin again. Impossible task, Bob’s your uncle, dead liderc.”

Sam snickers. Then there’s a silence during which Dean realizes what he’s said. He sneaks another glance Sam’s way, mind racing for ways to fix the situation, but it’s too late. Sam’s jaw is tense, his eyes suspicious.

“I never told you how to kill it. The thing about getting it to perform an impossible task… How’d you know?”

Dean groans, rolls facedown. Then Sam’s pushing his shoulder hard, trying to roll him back over. Dean didn’t even hear him get up from the table.

“Hey. Dean. I asked you a question.”

“C’mon, Sammy. Do we have to do this now?” Dean’s head feels light and heavy at the same time.

“Yeah, man. We do.” Sam pulls out John’s journal, slaps it down in front of Dean’s face, and that’s when Dean knows he’s screwed. “Tell me about the missing page.”

“What missing page?”

Dean almost expects Sam to hit him. But that’s stupid. _Sam wouldn’t. That was Dad. Just Dad_. Dean pushes himself to a seated position, makes a show of inspecting his battered knuckles. Sam eyes him mistrustfully.

“What happened to your hand, Dean?”

“Jerk at the bar,” Dean lies. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’ve never defended a lady’s honor.”

Sam’s jaw tightens. He sucks in a deep breath, refocusing. Dean realizes his little brother isn’t going to leave this one alone.

“Listen, Dean. When I went through Bobby’s stuff on liderc, he mentions a hunt. You and Dad. But when I check that date in Dad’s journal…” Sam trails off, letting the leather-bound book fall open. There’s a ragged, ripped edge where a page should be. Dean swallows.

“Dad probably ripped it out because we never caught the damn thing.”

But the truth is, even after the hunt’s disappointing conclusion, John had kept the page in. All the detail, all the information another hunter might need to kill the liderc, it’d all been there. When John disappeared, and the journal fell to Dean, destroying that page been the first thing, the only thing on his mind.

“Dad never tore out pages.”

Dean could argue that point, but he just looks at Sam. “Okay,” he says finally. “What do you want to know?”

“Did you kill it?”

“Dad killed one,” Dean grunts.

“So there were two?”

“Yup. Normal hunt. Really nothing to say.”

“Okay. Fine. Then why don’t you talk about it? Why rip out the page?”

“I don’t know, Sammy,” Dean breathes wearily. “It was a long time ago.” But that’s not an answer, and he knows it. “How bout I tell you what I know about the one we’re hunting now?” Dean goes on before Sam can ask another question, “and we call it even.”

Sam’s obviously dissatisfied, but he nods.

“Alright, then. Where to start. Well, first thing you should know is, it’s a family. Family of two, down to one now, since Dad took out the thing’s kid.”

“Kid? I thought they came out of chicken eggs?”

“I don’t know, man. You gonna let me tell the story, or not?”

Sam glares, jaw tight.

“Okay, so these things, or at least one of them, hatched back in the seventeen hundreds, out of an egg this family brought over from Hungary.”

“They brought the egg all the way from Hungary?”

“Chicken,” Dean amends. “Whatever. Point is, once this thing hatched, it killed the whole Gadjos family. Husband, wife, three kids. They had the valley pretty much to themselves, so when it offed them, it shapeshifted into the husband and took over their farm. Could only work at night, but it kept it up long enough to hatch another one. Like a buddy. And then they started hunting around here, expanding their territory. They’d been at it a long time when Dad and I got here.”

Sam looks up, and Dean can see the wheels starting to turn. “So that’s why the letter G.”

Dean nods. “Territorial marker. Older one stole the old farmer’s signature when it killed him.”

“How do you know all this? That’s ancient history.”

“The thing told us some of it. Seemed like it enjoyed a good monologue. Real douchebag. Other stuff we researched, chased local rumors.”

“And Dad killed one of them. Which one was it?”

“Younger one,” Dean grunts.

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” _Close enough to the truth._

“And Dad took you with him? Did he know? Did he have all the lore on what you were hunting?”

Hesitation’s enough of an answer. Disgust twists Sam’s face.

“I’m good, Sammy,” Dean sighs. “He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. Don’t make this about Dad.”

Sam laughs a humorless, strangled laugh. “It _is_ about Dad. It just is, Dean. You, and Dad, and secrets. Why didn’t I know about this? What else don’t I know?”

“Well, for starters, you don’t know how to kill a liderc. The impossible task angle’s a bust.”

“Is that what you and Dad tried?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it won’t work?”

“Think about it, Sammy. It can’t just be any task. You point to a bucket with holes in it and tell the liderc to empty the river, it’s gonna laugh in your face, then rip your face clean off for good measure. You’d have to pick a task it already _wants_ to do. Something it thinks it might actually be able to do. And how are you gonna figure that out ahead of time? How many liderc do you know?”

Sam clenches his jaw and glares. “So how’d Dad kill the one he killed, then?”

Dean grins. “Easy. Keep it up past its bedtime. Once sunrise hits, you’re golden.”

Sam stares for a second. “So you and Dad tracked a liderc.”

“Two,” Dean corrects.

“And you killed one of them by… what? Distracting it until the sun came up?”

“Bingo. Kentucky fried that son of a bitch.”

“What about the other one?”

Dean shrugs. “Got away.”

“And Dad didn’t go back to hunt it? You didn’t come back later?”

Dean says nothing. They look at each other for another long moment. Dean can’t decide whether he’s said too little or too much. Finally, Sam nods. The tension isn’t gone, but it’s pushed back, at least for now. Sam’s voice takes on a more businesslike tone.

“So what you’re telling me is, you and Dad ganked this liderc’s kid. I guess it’s safe to assume this thing has some kind of vendetta?”

“Dunno. Probably.” The lack of concern makes Sam grimace, but Dean plows on. “I’ll catch you up tomorrow. But dude,” Dean gestures toward the bathroom, “is it cool if I go wash Lacey off my dick? Or was it Lexie?" Dean frowns, shrugs. "I mean, assuming you’re ready to roll credits on this long-ass chick flick moment.”

Sam sighs and waves him past.

“Don’t use all the hot water.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

But Dean stays in the shower until the water’s cold and the hairs along his arms rise in ridges of goose flesh. Teeth chattering, he holds his head beneath the pounding water and tries to drown out Sam’s words. _Some kind of vendetta_. He lets the water run over his face and tries to see nothing. But all he can hear is the distant river, and all he can see is that piece of brown leather torn from his old jacket. When he closes his eyes, it’s still there, carefully tied, set apart from the rest at the top of the shrine.


	3. Chapter 3

The sheets cling cool and heavy against Dean’s skin when he finally makes it into his own bed. Dawn’s maybe forty-five minutes out.  Tomorrow, Sam’ll want to go back to the forest, start the hunt, and that’s not something Dean’s looking forward to stomaching on zero shut-eye. But, no matter how long he lets himself sink into the mattress, Dean can’t sleep.

He’s caught up in a memory, like a loop of film playing on repeat. It’s not hard to figure out why. The inside of Dean’s head’s been an open wound since they arrived in town, and now that he’s ventured through the woods alone, it’s even worse. Buried memories have a way of clawing back to the surface. And Dean knows the liderc’s helping those memories along using whatever magic it’s got.

 _Could be here watching, right now_.

The neon glare streaming in from the parking lot isn’t bright enough to ease his mind, and so he lies awake, consoling himself with the knowledge that the liderc won’t attack here. It’ll wait until Dean’s alone. Or maybe Sam’s the one it’s here for. Maybe it’s drawn to the younger Winchester the same way its offspring gravitated toward John. Maybe tragic love stories smell to the liderc the same way apple pie smells to Dean.

The problem is, Dean doesn’t want to sleep. He wants to remember something the afternoon’s dredged up in his mind. Not the dark, hot pain of the first July hunt in these woods, but a day out of the same summer. A bright June day in small town Georgia.

It’s not a bad memory. Not the first part, anyway. If Dean could take the film reel out of his head, cut and splice until there’s just the one part of the story without everything that came after, it might even be one of the best memories he’s got.

It goes like this:

He’s sitting cross-legged in the bed of a silver 1987 Ford Ranger, running his fingers through a sheepdog’s warm fur. There’s a conversation rising and falling through the white-curtained farmhouse window a little ways up the driveway. John Winchester’s part of the dialogue goes in and out, like a bad radio signal.

“Be good for Dean, I guess… Someone closer to his own age…Responsibility.”

And, in reply, a low, gravelly voice, harder to understand: “Let them take the truck…Took out the whole nest last week…Just the one runner left. Safe enough.”

Dean remembers the butterfly feeling, knowing the grownups were in the process of deciding something that would affect him. The fluttering hope. And all the time he’s listening, he’s watching a figure approach up the long drive. The sun’s so bright it’s hard to make out the silhouette’s features at first. But even at a distance, Dean already knows them by heart.

Smooth, sun-browned skin. Blue eyes. Blue jeans. Sweat stained white t-shirt. Sleeves rolled.

“Hey, Dean,” Ethan calls, still a few yards out. “They come to a decision yet?”

Dean shakes his head. Ethan closes the distance, leans on the truck bed with both hands. The dog heaves itself off Dean’s lap to greet the older boy.

 _No_ , Dean remembers thinking. _Not a boy_. _Ethan’s a man. He’ll be eighteen next week_.

When the dog leaps down to roam the yard, Ethan vaults up into the truck bed, making the cab at Dean’s back sway.

“Whatcha got there?” Ethan points to an object in Dean’s fist. Dean opens his hand.

“Amulet. Sammy got it for me.”

Ethan takes the bronze trinket, holds it in his palm. “Cord’s broken,” he remarks. Dean nods.

It’d torn on their last hunt—the one where Dean and John had crossed paths with Ethan and his father, Grant. They’d all been hunting the same slippery shapeshifter, and so they’d teamed up to track it. It should’ve been a piece of cake, with that many hunters working together, and just the one rogue shifter. But right at the end, just when they had it cornered, the thing had grabbed Dean by the throat and hurled him against a wall. Dean hadn’t minded the bruises so much. Mostly, he’d spent the past few days kicking himself for not being quick enough. The necklace, though… Dean didn’t want to see the look on Sam’s face when he saw the damage.

“You trust me?” Ethan glances at Dean. Dean nods. Ethan must see the hesitation, though, because he bumps Dean’s shoulder with his own. “Don’t worry.”

Then he jumps down, headed for the barn. At first, Dean can’t decide what to do. Should he follow? It feels too puppy-like. But then he hears Ethan’s voice calling from the loft window.

“You coming, or what?”

Dean grins. By the time he makes it up the ladder, Ethan’s standing on a bale of hay, dangling the amulet with one hand just out of Dean’s reach. He needs the hay bale to get the full advantage, Dean notices with some satisfaction. On even ground, Ethan’s only a few inches taller.

Dean plays along, snatching at the amulet, laughing when he trips and tumbles into the dusty hay. Ethan laughs, too—a light, ringing laugh that fills the scorching, humid air.

“C’mon,” he goads playfully. “I’ve seen you fight. You can do better than that.”

Dean feels heat creep into his face. He makes another charge, this time knocking Ethan down. They scuffle on the floor.

“Ow!” Ethan yells, still half-laughing, and staggers back. Dean’s horrified to see blood streaming from the older boy’s nose.

“Shit,” Dean breathes. “Sorry!”

“Gotta learn how to pull your punches.” Ethan’s shaking his head, but his eyes are still smiling. Dean feels something in his chest relax.

“Sorry,” he can’t help saying again. “Not a lot of practice.”

“You and your brother don’t mess around?”

Dean shrugs. “Not like this”

“Why not?”

“Giving you a bloody nose, that’s fine. No offense.” Dean looks at Ethan anxiously. Ethan doesn’t look offended. “But if I hurt Sam…”

“It’d be an accident,” Ethan finishes matter-of-factly.

But Dean shakes his head. “Not to Dad.”

He doesn’t know why he says it. Once it’s out, he feels dirty, like he’s told a lie. Except it’s not a lie, and Dean knows it. Ethan’s lips press into a tight line.

“Hold out your hand,” he orders. Dean does. Into his outstretched palm drops the amulet, now on a shiny new leather cord.

“Wow. Thanks, man,” Dean grins. Ethan’s lips quirk up, but there’s still something serious in his eyes.

“Here,” he says, gesturing for Dean to turn around. Ethan loops the leather cord around Dean’s neck. It takes him a minute to make the clasp catch, and Dean’s left standing there with Ethan’s breath on his sweaty neck and a flush rising in his face. Then Ethan steps back. “Done,” he says.

“Thanks.” Dean turns back to Ethan, but doesn’t know what else to say. In fact, all words seem to have left him.

“You’re a tough kid,” Ethan tells him, strangely earnest. It’s supposed to be a compliment. Dean can even see something like admiration in Ethan’s eyes, even though he can’t figure out why. But the “kid” tacked on at the end stings in a way it’s never stung coming from any other hunter. Stings way more than it should.

Dean shrugs. Ethan sees he’s said something wrong, and, to make up for it, throws an arm around Dean’s shoulders.

“Just wait,” the older boy says. “My dad’ll talk your dad into it. A whole week on our own.”

“What about Sam?”

Ethan glances sideways at Dean.

“He’s too little. My mom’ll watch him while we’re gone.”

Dean feels like he should protest, but instead he nods. “You really think they’ll let us?”

“Betcha they do.”

Dean grins. “How much you wanna bet?”

“Dunno. How much you got?”

They turn out their pockets. Dean’s got a handful of rock salt and an empty shotgun shell. Ethan’s pockets are cleaner—just a little hay from the scuffle, some lint.

“Tell you what,” Ethan laughs, “Why don’t we bet on something else?”

“Like what?”

“How bout, if you’re right, I’ll let you have my shotgun as a parting gift.”

“Your dad’ll let you?”

Ethan shrugs. “It’s mine, not his. I can get another one, easy.”

“Sure.” Dean pushes Ethan playfully. “I’ll take those odds. But what if you’re right?”

“If I’m right,” Ethan says, suddenly serious again, “you have to forget about them. Forget what your dad wants. Forget about watching over Sam. When we’re hunting, it’s just you and me. Got it?”

Dean swallows. After a second, he nods.

“Good.” Ethan grins. “Cuz I’m gonna win.”

And he does.

That’s as far as Dean will let himself get in the memory, though. Just to the part where they run back up to the house, and John gives Dean the news. Just until the part where Dean realizes he’ll be spending a whole week with Ethan—just the two of them hunting a lone, straggling vamp through the country lanes of southeastern Georgia.

There’s more Dean wants to remember—more bright days and looks and conversations. But he won’t let himself. Not yet.

Finally, with the sun pricking through the polyester curtains and Sam already headed out for coffee, Dean sleeps.

 

***

An hour and three cups of coffee later, Dean finds himself sitting next to Sam in a diner booth, listening to sob story after sob story— tales from the mouths of park rangers, surveyors, trail maintenance workers, hikers. Now that Sam’s asking the right questions, they’re crawling out of the woodwork. Most of these victims haven’t reported anything to the authorities. Lots of them claim they haven’t told anyone about their experiences, period. But now they’re practically salivating with local legends, rumors they’ve heard about particular campsites, weird feelings they got on specific mountaintops. Some of them are obviously faking it, or delusional. Others are harder to pin down. There’ve been out-and-out attacks, but those’ve been rare, if you ask the locals. More people report seeing dead loved ones in their dreams. Some wake up bleeding. Some don’t—or, at least, if they’ve been punctured anywhere, they don’t feel it or notice. Multiple hikers claim they’ve been targeted more than once. Dean can’t decide whether the thing’s getting sloppy, or whether maybe the multiple, escalating attacks are intentional. _Maybe that’s what gets this douchebag’s rocks off_ , he considers bitterly. _Going back for more_.

And it makes sick sense. The better a liderc knows a person, the easier the person is to read, and the stronger the liderc gets. Maybe it saves the full-on attack for the second, or even the third encounter. By then, Dean guesses, it’s strong enough to overpower its victim easily, with very little risk to itself.

Dean wants to feel sorry for the victims, but he can’t help remembering something John said during that first liderc hunt. “People who think this is the worst thing out there, they’re lucky, Dean. Most monsters kill people. Generally speaking, unless you’re trying to kill it direct, this one lets you live. Old softie, if you ask me.”

John hadn’t exactly _said_ the people who’d been attacked were being babies about the whole thing—not in so many words. But he hadn’t turned on the sympathy charm all that hard, either. Not like he did with grieving widows, or the parents of missing kids. _Get over it_ , was what his eyes said every time the waterworks started. And Dean can’t help feeling the same vague contempt now. The same disgust at weakness.

It gets so bad, even Sam notices.

“Dude. What’s your problem?”

They’re between interviews, having just waved goodbye to an elderly mountain man with three distinctly gray teeth.

“I don’t know, Sammy. Don’t you get the feeling some of them are playing it up? You know, looking for attention?”

“No, Dean,” Sam furrows his brow. “I don’t. Why would you think that?”

Dean takes a big bite of the burger in front of him. When he finally finishes chewing, he says, “It’s not the worst monster we’ve ever hunted. I don’t see the big deal.”

Sam stares.

“ _You don’t see the big deal?_ ” he repeats slowly.

“Yeah.” Dean takes another bite. Sam looks sick.

“What happened to you out here, man?”

Dean almost chokes.

“Nothing, dude. What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you’re acting exactly like Dad right now.”

“And that’s a problem because?” Dean shoots back. Sam’s clenched fist comes to rest on the table.

“I’m gonna take a break. I think you should, too, before you really screw one of these poor people up with your strong and silent, stoic crap.”

“My… my _what_?”

But Sam’s already rising.

“I’ll meet you back at the motel,” he mutters, and then he’s gone.

Dean sits in the booth for a while, finishes his burger, downs a beer. He’s about to jet, not sure where he’s going, when a dark-haired young woman slides into the seat across from him.

“Hannah,” the young woman smiles, sticking out her hand. Dean shakes it awkwardly, sits back again, still eyeing the door.

“Okay. Hannah.” He fakes a smile. “What’s your story, sweetheart?”

She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Dean waves his hand, “your hiking story. Let me guess. You were backpacking alone in the mountains. You woke up in the middle of the night and ended up reenacting the plot of Dead Snow 2 with some long lost boyfriend. Am I right?”

The woman—Hannah—blinks again, and Dean realizes too late she’s blinking back tears. He’d missed it because of the pretty smile.

“I’m gonna go,” she says in a choked voice, gathering up her purse and starting to rise. Dean kicks himself.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound…” He can’t think of the right word.

“Flippant?” She fixes him with a glassy stare. “Callous?”

“Yeah. Both of those. Agent Van Halen, by the way.”

Dean flashes his fake badge. There’s an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Hannah settles back into the booth.

“It wasn’t just one time,” she says in a low voice, not looking at Dean. “It, uh… it attacked me twice.”

“You remember both attacks? I mean, you were conscious both times?”

Hannah nods.

“Same part of the woods?”

She nods again, then dashes a tear away with the back of her hand. There’s more anger than grief in the quick motion. Finally, Dean makes himself ask the obvious question.

“Why’d you go back? After the first time?”

Color creeps into her face, but she looks at him so fiercely that, if he’d been standing, he’d have to take a step back.

“I grew up in those woods,” she says firmly. “They’re mine. Not his.”

It’s Dean’s turn to nod. A pang of admiration shoots through him.

“So who’d it show up as? Dead boyfriend?”

Hannah looks down at the table, unwilling to share further. Dean clears his throat. Glancing around, he realizes they’re alone. No one to hear. He decides to risk it.

“The thing is, Hannah, this thing that got you? It got me too. Back when I was just a kid.” Her eyes dart up to his face, away again. Dean pushes forward. “I wasn't strong enough to kill it, and it got away. But now I’m back, and the truth is, I really don’t want to be here. So anything you know that might help me and my brother ice this thing quick… Well, I’d really appreciate it.”

She studies him carefully. “What form did it take? For you, I mean?”

Dean looks steadfastly out the window. “Another kid I had a crush on, who’d died in a… a hunting accident a few weeks before.”

Now she’s eyeing him curiously. Dean tries hard to keep the anger tamped down. After all, it’s not really her he’s angry at.

“Guy, or girl?”

He swallows.

“Guy.”

“Oh. I see. I’m sorry.” Hannah leans forward, places her hands over his. When he looks back at her, there’s something satisfied in her eyes.

 _She believes me_.

Then Hannah starts telling her story, unprompted.

“It happened twice, like I said. More than a year ago, now. I had kind of a rough childhood,” she laughs nervously, “and I guess it knew that. Anyway, the thing that attacked me… it looked like my stepdad.”

“Oh,” is all Dean can think to say.

“Yeah.” She laughs again. “Not a great guy, even when he was alive. Drank himself to death when I was fifteen. But then I’m up on that mountain, and he’s just…there.”

“You tried to fight him.” It’s a statement, not a question.

She nods. “Both times. Did you?”

Dean shakes his head like he’s shaking off a fly. “No. It’s hard to… uh, hard to explain.”

She squeezes his hands. “It’s okay,” she says. “That kind of thing… everyone reacts differently.”

But Dean pulls his hands back, clears his throat. “Did it say anything to you?”

She furrows her brow. “Yeah. It really liked talking about itself. Though it was kind of hard to concentrate on what it was saying. That part was actually pretty tedious.”

“Tell me about it.” Dean flashes a crooked grin. “Nothing like a monologue to get the blood pumping.”

Hannah snorts, then covers her mouth with her hand. Dean feels strangely like a weight’s been lifted off his chest.

“Anything it said make sense?”

“It talked a lot about some family, the Grudges, or something like that—”

“Gadjos,” Dean interjects.

“Yeah, that. And then it told me how it’d been doing this for hundreds of years. It even rattled off a list of names. One of them I recognized. A guy from my hiking club. Never brought it up, though.”

“Not an easy conversation to start.” Dean gives her a small smile. She nods wearily.

“There was one guy he talked about a whole lot. He wanted me to give this guy a message, if I ever saw him.”

_Now that’s interesting._

“What was the guy’s name?”

“I think it was a last name. Winchester.”

Dean drags in a deep breath. “Winchester. You sure?”

“Yeah. Like the rifle, right? Kind of memorable.”

Dean feels like he’s sinking through the booth, through the floor. He struggles to keep his voice steady. “What was the message?”

“Oh. Um, he said to tell Winchester he’d be waiting. That’s all I remember.”

She’s glazing over again, clearly pulled back into the memory, and Dean wants to take her hands in his, but his hands are shaking. Instead, he leans forward.

“Hey. Hannah, look at me. I’m gonna get this thing. Tomorrow night, I’m gonna find the son of a bitch, and I’m gonna rip its lungs out.”

At this declaration, Hannah’s eyes clear, and the fierce look returns. “I can draw you a map,” she offers. “I know those woods. The quick way it gets around, I think it must use unmarked trails, and maybe even some caves as hideouts. I can show you where they are.”

“That’d be great,” Dean replies, swallowing hard, faking another smile. He leaves the diner with three napkins covered in blue ink and a pit the size of Kansas churning in his stomach.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam must’ve walked back to the motel, because the keys are still in the Impala when Dean makes it out to the parking lot. He waves a final goodbye to Hannah through the glass front of the diner, makes himself get in without slamming the door. The key turns in the ignition. The sound of the engine thrums in his ears, familiar, comforting. Without looking, he grabs a tape, shoves it in the tape deck’s open mouth, and Geddy Lee’s falsetto-pitched voice fills the car.

“Why try? I know why.  
The feeling inside me says it's time I was gone.  
Clear head, new life ahead.  
It's time I was king now, not just one more pawn.”

Dean starts to sing along on the chorus.

“Fly by night, away from here,  
Change my life again,  
Fly by night, goodbye my dear.  
My ship isn't coming and I just can't pretend.”

He lets the words take his mind, lets the road take the car. At first he thinks he’s headed for the forest again, but a dive bar off the highway catches his eye. It’s seedier than the one in town. No chance Sam’ll be here. Parking the Impala, Dean notices a few admiring glances from the men in the vacant lot next door.

“Nice car you got there,” one calls over.

Dean nods in their direction. “Thanks. You know where I can find a decent game of billiards around here?”

The men grin. “You’re looking at it. Only pool hall in town.”

Dean waves his thanks. “See you inside, boys?”

And that’s all it takes. A flashy outsider, looking too big for his britches. The kind of guy these townies are dying to take down a peg. But not so different from them, really. Still all-American. Dean knows how to look vulnerable without making himself a target.

Within a good hour’s conversation, the gaggle from outside’s laying bets. Dean takes on a beefy, tattooed man first, almost wins, loses on purpose.

“Damn,” Dean winces, leaning on his cue and feigning chagrin. “Guess tonight’s not my night, boys. I should hit the road.”

But he lets them persuade him to go another round—a round he also loses. By then it’s dark outside, the betting’s heavy, and Dean’s ready to be done with it all. Mosquitoes whine through to door whenever anyone opens it. Dean knows Sam’s probably out looking for him, or sitting back at the motel, pissed. And anyway, he’s three shots of Kentucky bourbon too far in. Much more, and he won’t be able to shoot straight.

Dean’s third game is against a man with massive arms and black, oil-slicked hair. When Dean sinks the eight ball, there’s a stunned silence. _Only so much time before stunned turns angry_ , Dean reminds himself. While everyone’s distracted by the game playing on the TV, he pockets the cash fast, makes his getaway out the back.

Only, he’s not fast enough. Rounding the corner back to the parking lot, Dean runs smack into the same big armed man. Rough hands grip Dean’s shoulders.

“Whoa, there,” Dean forces a grin. “That’ll cost you extra.”

The big man laughs a mean laugh, and that’s when Dean sees the rest of them behind him in the dark.

“Look at ‘im,” the big man calls back to the others. “This boy thinks we’re just a bunch of dumb hicks. Thinks we don’t know a hustle when we seen one.”

Dean takes a step back, feels his shoulder blades hit the wall of the bar.

“Sure. Maybe I just hustled you. Or maybe,” he calls cheekily to the guys hanging back, “ginormo here can't play a decent game of pool to save his life.”

The big man lands a punch to Dean’s stomach, dropping him to his knees.

“You watch your smart-ass mouth,” he warns.

“Wow,” Dean gasps, looking up from the ground. “I guess you are as dumb as you look.”

And then, before the big-armed man can smash Dean’s jaw clear off, Dean tackles his legs, knocking him off balance. The guy’s unconscious before his friends reach him. They try to take Dean three on one, and there's a tense moment when they have him face down on the asphalt, the smell of oil and cigarette butts thick in his nostrils. In the end, though, they don’t stand a chance. Dean leaves them propped against the dark side of the bar, out of the florescent lights. They’re all still breathing.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, Dean pulls out the rag he keeps in the glovebox, wipes his knuckles. Then he sits, staring out at the highway. It’s time to go, before they come to and find the shotguns he figures people keep stashed all over the place up here. But he can’t help hesitating. He’s got the Impala. He could head out into the forest. End it all, right here, right now.

After what Hannah told him this morning, Dean knows he won’t have to go looking for the creature.

_It’ll find me. And when it does…_

A plan’s coming together in Dean’s head. A plan that just might work. It’s not something he can run by Sam—not without explaining the whole damn mess. And Sam wouldn’t go for it anyway. He’d want to do things by the book. Probably get them both killed.

Staring at the highway where it slopes up into the mountains, Dean knows he has to find a way to keep Sam out of it. And the best way’s to do it now. Alone.

He’s about to peel out when a knocking noise almost makes him jump out of his skin.

“Hey! Dean!”

There’s another rap on the passenger’s side window. It’s Sam.

 _I could leave him here. Stick to the plan_. But Dean knows Sam would find a way to follow. The window of opportunity’s gone, at least for tonight.

“Dude,” Sam starts in as soon as Dean unlocks the door. “Where the hell’ve you been?”

“Just get in the car, Sammy,” Dean growls. Jaw tight, Sam starts to obey. Then he gets a whiff of Dean.

“No. You’re not driving. Get out.”

When Dean doesn’t move, Sam shoves his shoulder. Finally, Dean caves. Once he’s safely in the passenger’s side, he tosses a nervous glance back to where he’s left the four angry men. _Still out. But not for long_.

“You were gonna drive like this?” The key’s still in the ignition, but Sam shows no sign of leaving. “What happened to your hands?”

“Gentlemen’s disagreement,” Dean smirks. Sam’s lips tighten.

“You’re hustling again.”

“We need the cash.”

“No, we don’t. I mean, yeah, we do,” Sam sighs, “but there’re other ways to get it. You don’t have to do things the same way Dad did.”

“Dad quit hustling pool.”

“Yeah, Dean, because he was crap at it. But he sure as hell didn’t stop you. Let you go around like some kind of billiards wonder boy.”

“Because I’m not crap at it. Actually, I’m friggin fantastic. And we needed the money.” Dean shrugs off Sam’s concerned hand on his shoulder. He feels like the two of them have had this conversation a million times. Like he’s going around in circles.

Finally, mercifully, Sam puts the car into gear. The whole ride back to the motel, neither brother says a word. When Sam pulls in, Dean gets out, brushes the bits of asphalt and broken glass from his jacket, and makes a beeline for the road.

“Dean. What the hell?” Sam calls from the car.

But he must know Dean’s headed for the bar in town, because when Dean looks back, Sam’s already indoors. The light from their room spills out into the street through the curtains. It’s orange light, ugly.

The humid night presses on Dean’s skin, and he’s glad when he opens the tavern door and remembers it’s air conditioned. There’s a blonde at the bar. She glances over her shoulder when he walks in, gives him an appraising look.

“Usual,” Dean tells the bartender, winking at the blonde. The bartender, who knows Dean a little too well by now, rolls her eyes and slaps a shot of whisky on the counter.

“Haven’t seen you here before,” the blonde purrs. She’s already turning toward him, angling. Her purple dress leaves little to Dean’s imagination. He runs his eyes over her long legs, the curves of her arms, and grins.

“Whatcha drinkin, sweetheart?”

“Bourbon, on the rocks.”

 _Expensive taste_ , Dean thinks, but all he says is, “Let’s get another one for the lady here.”

The bartender shoots him a look, but she must still have a soft spot from when she had her go-around earlier in the week, because soon the blonde has her drink. She talks for what feels like forever—goes on and on about how much she hates small town life, how everyone’s so outdoorsy, how there’s no culture here. She wants to see the world. Dean listens just attentively enough to be convincing.

“My line of work,” he finally says, “I’ve been all over.”

“And what’s that?” she wants to know.

“Federal marshal.” Dean flashes the credentials he’d pulled at random out of the glovebox. Too late, he realizes it’s a Jackson County Sheriff's badge. The blonde doesn’t notice.

“Oooh. So you catch bad guys?”

“Yes ma’am.”

After that, it’s just a matter of letting her convince him how, now he’s off duty, he deserves some fun for a change.

“Your place, or mine?” she giggles, and the next thing Dean knows, he’s got his fingers twisted in sheets that smell the same sweet way the blonde smells, like cheap perfume and sweat. She’s underneath him, saying something, begging him not to stop, and he should be happy—happy it’s this easy. But the whisky hasn’t done the trick he’d hoped it would, and he can’t stop thinking about the one time it wasn’t easy. When it’d been awkward, and he’d made every move keenly aware of his heart hammering in his throat.

It’s unfair, really, that that time had been the best. Nothing afterward had ever compared.

 _How could it? There’s nothing like the first time_.

But it isn’t just that. This quick, easy act—this habit he’d started after that summer, hungry for the “atta boy’s” and pats on the back John threw his way after every conquest— _this_ had never been everything Dean wanted. Not even close.

Leaning his face into the hollow of the blonde’s gorgeous, golden collarbone, Dean tries to forget. There’s no denying it feels good. He wants that to be enough. Needs it to be enough.

But in the end, he’s not with the blonde woman—not in her bed, not even in her apartment. He’s stretched out in the bed of Ethan’s truck, the quiet burn of sun-heated metal under his skin, staring into eyes bluer than the summer Georgia sky.

He’s remembering.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second scene in this chapter is where things start getting...well...hot. There's super dark stuff coming, obviously, but I had fun writing this somewhat lighter, sexier chapter to establish the relationship between Ethan and Dean. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 5

Morning brings a wicked hangover. Dean’s still tangled up in the blonde’s sheets when his cellphone buzzes, but from the dead silence of the place, he figures she’s long gone. In daylight, the studio apartment looks sad—no pictures on the walls, everything still in boxes. It’s the space of a person waiting for any excuse to leave. Dean knows the feeling.

Blearily, without opening his eyes more than a slit, he staggers up, feels for the phone in the pocket of the jeans lying where he’d shed them the night before.

Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz.

He fumbles, almost drops it, finds his grip.

“”Sup?”

“Is there even any point asking where you are?”

It’s Sam. Dean heaves a sigh.

“Relax, Sammy. I’m… You know what, never mind. Meet at the diner in ten?”

“Yeah.”

And Sam hangs up.

Dean lifts the jeans off the floor, digs into the other pocket for his keys. Instead he finds Bobby’s old flask, takes a swig. _Just to take the edge off_. If he’s going to keep up this charade with Sam, he has to stay sharp.

Dean spends another five minutes searching the apartment for his keys before he remembers they took the blonde’s car. By now, Sam’s probably at the diner, waiting.

Squinting against the washed out glare of mid-morning, Dean starts walking. By the time he hits downtown, he’s figured out where he is. He’s also twenty minutes late. The diner door dings cheerfully. Still groggy, Dean scans the diner, standing awkwardly at the front until the hostess points to where Sam’s sitting three tables down.

“Goddamn it, Sam,” Dean growls, sinking into the vinyl booth. “A window seat? Really?”

Sam’s mouth twitches.

“Hangover?”

Dean grabs Sam’s water, downs a gulp, wipes his mouth. Sam raises his eyebrows.

“You’re disgusting. You know that, right?”

Dean waves one hand impatiently. “Save the lecture, Sammy. Fill me in.”

“Fill you in on what?”

“The plan. What’d you think?” Then, to the approaching waitress, “Three eggs, over easy. Six hotcakes, side of bacon. On second thought, double the bacon.”

She looks askance at him over her shoulder as she walks away. When Dean looks up from his menu, Sam’s giving him the same look.

“What?”

Sam sighs. “I figured you should take the lead on this one. I mean, since obviously I don’t have all the information.”

Dean blinks. “That’s… surprisingly reasonable.”

Sam gives a condescending smile. “So, you’re the expert. Where do we start?”

Dean considers his options.

“Turns out you were onto something about this thing having a vendetta,” he finally admits. “Apparently, it’s been giving out our name to victims. Looking to catch our eye again.”

“Do you think it knows Dad’s gone?”

Dean replies through a mouthful of bacon. “M’ not sure. All it said was Winchester. Could be Dad. Could be me.” But the brown leather strip still tangles at the corner of Dean’s mind, and he knows it’s a lie. Sam takes a deep breath. Dean braces himself.

“I know you don’t want to talk about what happened last time, Dean. I get it. I do.”

“But?”

“But if we’re gonna hunt this thing, I need to know what you know.”

He’s right. _Why does he always have to be friggin right?_

Dean sets his fork down, clears his throat.

“What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me what you remember, man. That’s it.”

Dean scoffs. _It sounds so easy_. “Fine,” he finally says. “But no more chick flick moments.”

“No more chick flick moments,” Sam repeats, holding up his right hand. “Scout’s honor.”

Dean pretends to study something out the window. Finally, he starts.

“Last time, we went to Bobby first to get the lore on the thing. Bobby…uh, he warned Dad not to go after it alone. You know. Because of Mom. Bobby seemed to think Dad wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Well, yeah,” Sam points out. “You remember what he was like back then.”

Dean nods, clears his throat again. “I guess Dad took the advice to heart. But he didn’t want any of his hunting buddies along for the ride. Didn’t want them to see him like that, I guess, if things went south. Could get personal. Luckily, I’d been eavesdropping on their conversation, and when Dad found out, he asked me for help. Needed me to have his back.”

Dean can tell Sam wants to say something, but he’s biting his tongue. _Good_. Trying to wrangle his thoughts into something coherent, Dean takes a long sip of water. “We did the local research, talked to victims, same stuff we’re doing now. And then Dad and I took Bobby’s old camping stuff up into the mountains. Left you with a hunting family up this way.”

“Yeah,” Sam remembers. “The Hensons.”

Dean shrugs. “We camped out in the backcountry for four or five days, posing as regular hikers. Didn’t want the thing to know we were hunters. That way, if things went bad, it might leave us alive.”

“Not an option we’ve got now,” Sam observes. Dean grimaces.

“Wasn’t really a great idea then, either. Dad tried keeping a low profile, but no dice. The thing knew. And there were two of ‘em. We hadn’t planned on that.”

“So what was the plan? You said Dad didn’t want to try the impossible task angle. But how do you keep a liderc out in the open with the sun rising? Doesn’t sound any easier.”

Dean’s jaw clenches.

“The thing about these douchebags, Sammy, is that they’re entitled pricks. Based on what victims were saying back then, the son of a bitch didn’t turn tail until it had what it wanted. Not once. Some folks it stayed with all night. We figured it was kind of a perfectionist. Or maybe just really hungry. Either way, Dad thought if we could hold out giving it what it wanted long enough, it’d forget about everything else, put itself in a bad position. He was right, Sam. Right about everything. Just never figured on a second one showing up out of the blue. And these suckers generally hunt alone, so, I mean, who would?”

Sam eyes Dean carefully. “You still haven’t told me the plan.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean mumbles through another mouthful of bacon, “I just did. Dad couldn’t face the thing head on. Would’ve just made it stronger. All the stuff with Mom. If we’d gone that route, it would’ve ganked both of us, day one.”

Sam’s face is tense, jaw set in anger. “Dean. Please tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

Dean shrugs, takes another bite. “I was in on it, dude. Relax. It’s not like he gave me a full-on order. Might’ve even been my idea from the get-go. I don’t remember.”

Sam sputters. “What the hell, Dean? How do you not see how totally screwed up that is? Using his own kid as bait?”

“I was old enough,” Dean grunts. “Wasn’t my first rodeo.” He’s not even one hundred percent sure it’s a lie. Not sure what counts and what doesn’t. “It just made sense. I was pretty young, so Dad figured I wouldn’t have the kind of history that made other victims cave, give in to the thing right off the bat. But there’d been other attacks, victims around my age, so we knew I’d be on the menu.”

“You were a kid.”

“I was never exactly a regular kid, Sammy. Don’t make it into something it’s not.”

There’s a long silence while Dean scrapes his plate.

“So what happened?”

“Like I said, there were two of them. One stuck with me, like we’d figured, but the other one found where Dad was hiding out. They fought. I guess it turned into Mom. I never asked. But he pulled it off. Kept the thing occupied, fried it sunny side up.”

“But the one that attacked you… It got away?”

Dean’s fists clench of their own accord, and he has to put down the cup in his hand so he doesn’t break it. “Yeah, Sammy. I let the thing get away.” Dean knows Sam’s about to ask the one question Dean still can’t answer, so he fishes in his wallet, pulls out a wad of cash for the tip. “That’s about it. Not that much to tell. You done?” He points to Sam’s half-eaten egg white omelet.

“Oh. Yeah.” Sam pushes it away from him. He won’t look Dean in the eye, which is good, because Dean doesn’t want that kind of pity. Now that he’s told the story—the bare bones of it, anyway—all he wants to do is forget it. He rises from the booth.

“You want my advice? We head up there tonight. There’s just one of the slippery bastards left now, so no surprises. Let the thing find me. This time, I’ll make sure it doesn’t get off easy.”

“While I’m doing what, exactly?” Sam rejoins. “Twiddling my thumbs?”

“You don’t wanna take this thing on, Sammy. Trust me.”

“Dad did it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not Dad.”

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Neither are you, Dean.”

“True.” Dean slams the door to the Impala. “Ask most people, they’ll say I’m a better hunter than he ever was.” It’s the closest he’ll ever get to insulting the man. Even just saying it out loud knits a tight spot in his chest.

Sam’s face closes off, but he doesn’t argue. Dean guns the engine, waits for Sam to get in. “I was a kid last time,” he adds once Sam’s in the passenger’s seat and they’re on the road. “A kid, Sammy. You were right about that. But I’m not a kid anymore. This time, the son of a bitch doesn’t stand a chance.”

 

***

“Uh, Dean?”

“Yeah.” Dean’s rummaging, looking for a missing tent stake.

“Dean. A little help?”

When Dean turns, Sam’s got half the tent collapsing on him, one of his long legs tangled in the fabric.

“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean mutters. “Hang on.” Dean grabs the missing stake, strides over, surveys the situation. “C’mon, man,” he groans. “I told you not to touch anything.”

“Yeah. Awesome vote of confidence, there.” Sam's nostrils flare. “Uh, can you unwrap my foot? If I let go, the whole thing’s gonna—”

But it’s too late. The nearly erected tent crumples in on itself, all the poles collapsing. Sam ends up on top of the pile, cursing, a tent pole twanging inches from his left eye.

“God, Sammy.” Dean doubles over laughing. “You should see yourself.”

“Fine. Don’t help me up.” Sam struggles to his feet, surveying Dean. “You’re in a good mood.”

Dean shrugs. It’s partly the whisky he sneaked while Sam was checking out at the sporting goods store, partly something else. Maybe having Sam here with him. Maybe the false security of daylight. Maybe the knowledge that next time the sun rises, one way or another, this’ll all be over.

He’s not sure how he’ll get rid of Sam when the time comes, but he knows it won’t be hard. The thing wants him alone. Just like last time. And it’s good at getting what it wants.

They’re using the old campsite, though Dean hasn’t shared that information with Sam. By now, the thing knows they’re here.

 _Tell him I’m waiting_.

Dean shivers.

“I’m going down for some water. You better have that thing back up when I get back,” he warns.

“Where’re the directions?” Sam casts around the campsite helplessly.

“Directions? Never heard of ‘em.” 

Sam glares.

“Back in a sec.” Dean winks, then heads down the trail to the river.

It’s a mistake, though. He knows it as soon as he starts down the path. _Too late to turn around_. So he keeps on, trying to ignore the landmarks. There’s the wide, flat, mossy rock John picked for eating. _Can’t have food near the campsite. Attracts bears_. In his mind’s eye, he can see them sitting there—John tall and strong, his thick black hair and beard barely tinged with salt-and-pepper gray. Dean’s there too, devouring a sandwich, the sleeves of the hand-me-down leather jacket rolled once to hide the fact it’s too big. He remembers John ruffling his hair, showing him how to hoist the food containers up on pulleys in the trees.

Once he reaches the river, it’s even worse. He spots the deep pool between three boulders where they’d bathed that morning. Dean’s only change of clothes had fallen in. It'd been his own fault for leaving them so close to the edge, and so John made him wait there, naked, until they dried. Dean remembers his horror at the order—his irrational fear that some other party of hikers would come stamping down the trail and find him exposed.

Which is funny when Dean thinks about it, because after that night, he’d stopped caring who saw his body. Stopped making an effort to hide it.

 _Weird. You'd think it’d go the other way. Maybe it does for some people. Wonder what makes the differenc_ e?

Dean plunges the canteen deep in the pool, lifts it out full. The water’s as bone-numbingly cold as it was then. Snow melt from the mountains, probably, mixed with the bounty of hidden springs. Not bothering to boil it, Dean takes a deep drink.

And then he’s somewhere else. It’s another memory, tied to cool water. A memory of Ethan.

They’re dangling their feet over the side of another river. This one’s brown, sluggish, acidic—a lowland stream. Warmer, too, but still cool at first touch. They’ve been tracking the rogue vamp for three days, following it farther and farther south. The Florida border’s just a few miles away, if you trust Ethan’s outdated road map.

It’s late morning; they should be headed out. Should’ve headed out hours ago. A pit’s forming in Dean’s stomach at the thought of what his father will say if they come back empty handed—growing and growing as he plays scenarios over in his head. But something about the long, tan lines of Ethan’s bare legs keeps Dean quiet. Bad as he wants to gank this vamp, he doesn’t want to move.

Ethan kicks his feet gently, sending cooler bands of water over Dean’s ankles. Dean kicks back, harder.

“Hey!” Ethan laughs as a wave of water sloshes over his rolled up boxers. Dean grins. Then, before Dean has time to think, Ethan shoves him off the dock. He comes up sputtering.

“You,” he pants, paddling toward Ethan’s dangling legs, “have made a _huge_ mistake!”

On the word “huge,” Dean gives a sudden yank, and a second later, Ethan’s thrashing in the water beside him. They choke and laugh and choke again, grabbing each other and the pilings to keep from sinking.

“Oh shit,” Ethan blinks, flipping wet hair out of his eyes. “You can swim, right?”

“Of course I can swim. I’m not some little kid,” Dean retorts. Then, to cover the sudden sharpness of the remark, he surges forward, dunking Ethan under. He can’t hold him under long, though. When Dean lets him surface, the older boy pulls himself halfway up the piling, breathing hard.

“I know. I mean,” he looks at Dean seriously, “I don’t think of you as a kid. You know?”

Feeling his face heat up, Dean plunges headfirst underwater. He doesn’t come up until he’s out of air. When he does, Ethan’s still clinging to the piling, watching him.

“C’mon,” Ethan says finally, extending his hand to Dean. Dean takes the slippery offering, pulls himself up to stand next to the taller boy. The concrete’s not really part of the dock—just an old cement pillar, half-submerged, left over from some older structure. There’s barely room at the top, so they stand with their arms around each other, dripping bodies pressed together at the sides. Ethan hangs on to the dock railing with one hand. Dean stares out at the water, ignoring the way his heart’s pounding.

“What if we lose the vamp?” he finally asks.

“We won’t.”

Ethan sounds so confident. So sure. Then he places one hand on Dean’s shoulder, turning him so it’s the fronts of their bodies touching, now. Dean’s heart feels like a fish flopping on the deck—like it’s going to leap out of his chest, slip off the piling, and swim away. He considers following its lead. He doesn’t do it, though. Just takes a deep, shuddering breath.

For a moment, everything's still. Then Ethan’s hand starts moving at Dean’s shoulder, fingers tracing the line of Dean’s collarbone. They slip down his chest, thumb coming to rest just below his hip. Dean sucks in another ragged breath, tilts his chin up.

This close, he can see the droplets of water clinging to Ethan’s eyelashes. There’s a speck of hazel in one of his blue irises, and he’s looking at Dean a way no one’s ever looked at Dean before.

Dean removes one hand from Ethan’s skin, leaning instead on the dock. Bracing himself so he doesn’t knock them both into the water, Dean lets Ethan’s lips find his.

And then there’s that feeling—the one Dean hasn’t felt since. The tingling, searing, rising feeling that starts below his bellybutton and floats behind his ribs.

For a second, Dean has no father. No dead mother. No Sammy to take care of. There’s only him and Ethan. That’s it.

It’s everything.


	6. Chapter 6

“What band did you say this was, again?”

Dean shoots Ethan a disbelieving look. They’re still on the highway, headed toward the coast.

“Seriously? It’s Foreigner, dude.”

“Huh.” A tiny frown creases Ethan’s forehead.

“What?” Dean demands. They’ve got the windows down, and Ethan’s driving with one hand on the wheel, hair blown back. He glances Dean’s way.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Lifted it from my dad’s car.”

“He won’t miss it?”

Dean shrugs, like he couldn’t care less. And it’s almost true. Sure, sneaking the tape from the glove box put a fluttering doubt in Dean’s stomach—a seed of worry growing, waiting for the moment he’d have to meet his father’s eyes again. But something about the distance and the open road and Ethan’s sure grip on the steering wheel makes John’s anger less real, now. Smaller.  Almost funny.  “Dad’s got a ton of these tapes,” he smirks. “I doubt he’ll go all Die Hard over one. And it’s not a road trip without music.”

To prove his point, Dean starts to sing along, drumming on the dash. “Now it's up to youuuuu.” He points to Ethan, who grins. “Can we make a secret rendezvous? Oh, before we dooooooo, you have to get away from you know whooooo…” A round of air guitar later, Ethan’s laughing—a full, loud laugh that makes him throw his head back.

“You know this stuff’s old, right?”

“Not old,” Dean shoots back defensively. “This is classic, dude.”

“Okay, sure. Classic.” Ethan elbows Dean lightly. “But still, it’s kind of before your time. What do you like about it?”

“Whadd’ya mean?”

“You know. What does it make you feel?”

Sensing some kind of test, Dean pauses. “I’ve never really thought about it,” he finally admits. “But I guess… like…powerful. Like nothing can go wrong.”

Ethan nods. “You think that’s why your dad likes it?”

Dean gives a noncommittal shrug. Ethan drums his fingers on the steering wheel for a second, then reaches over and ejects the tape.

“What the hell, man?”

But Ethan waves away Dean’s protest. “I wanna show you something. Look under your seat.”

Dean does. Crammed beneath the sticky red vinyl, there’s a shoebox full of tapes. Dean drags the crumpled box out of hiding, sets it on his lap.

“These are your dad’s?”

“Mine,” Ethan corrects. “Try that one.” He taps a cassette with a plain, beige, blue lettered cover. It’s in a shiny case—not scratched up and cracked like most of John’s.

“The Field Mice?” Dean reads off the front, skepticism evident in his voice.

Ethan grins. “Give it a chance, man. Side A.”

Dean sighs, slides the tape into the deck, presses play. Almost immediately, bright, quick electric guitar repeats the same cheery notes, starting soft, getting louder. By the tenth repetition, drums join in, followed by voices harmonizing—a man’s and a woman’s.

_I will. I’ll always remember_

_The days, the nights we spent together—_

_The happiness of being with you,_

_The sorrow of parting from you._

Dean shifts in his seat, looks out the window. He can feel Ethan’s eyes on him.

“Nah,” the older boy finally shakes his head. “You’re not getting it. Close your eyes.”

Dean shoots him a baffled look.

“Just trust me,” Ethan grins, and so Dean leans his head back, lets his lids fall shut.

“You’re so weird,” he mumbles. Ethan just laughs. He rewinds the song—Dean can hear the old tape deck whirring furiously—then presses play again.

_I will. I’ll always remember_

_The days, the nights we spent together—_

_The happiness of being with you,_

_The sorrow of parting from you._

Dean’s feeling stupid, about to open his eyes, but then he feels Ethan’s hand just above his knee. It gives a gentle squeeze.

“Just listen,” the other boy murmurs. As if on cue, a piano joins the guitar. Ethan’s fingers drum against his blue jeans, keeping pace with the rhythm. By the time Dean can slow his hammering heart and concentrate on the music again, the voices are crooning something about September. The same line repeats over and over, until Dean knows he could sing along, until he almost wants to.

_September's not… September’s not so far away._

When the song ends, Ethan stops the tape, removing his hand from Dean’s knee. Aware of the blush heating his cheeks, Dean opens his eyes. The afternoon glare’s almost blinding.

“Came out last year,” Ethan explains. “I was saving up to see them if they ever got a tour this side of the Atlantic. Not gonna happen now, though.”

“Why not?”

“They broke up. Got in a big fight after their London show. This was… uh, November.”

“Oh.” Dean doesn’t know what to say.

“So what’d you feel?”

Dean takes a deep breath. “It was…nice.”

“Just nice?” Ethan sounds disappointed. Dean searches his brain for the right words.

“No. I mean…It made me feel… lighter, I guess.”

“So you liked it?” Ethan’s grinning now, triumphant.

“Yeah,” Dean nods a little breathlessly. “I _really_ liked it.”

“You can have it,” Ethan says, pulling the tape out of the deck, handing it to Dean. Dean almost drops it trying to put it back in the case.

“Really? I mean, you sure?”

Ethan glances over at him, smile wide. “Hell yeah, I’m sure.”

His hand slides over Dean’s knee again, and this time Dean has the sense to reach for it, cover it with his own. As if they’ve done it a million times before, the two sets of fingers interlace—Ethan’s warm and brown and sure, Dean’s clammy, slightly freckled. Looking down, Dean’s satisfied to see his hand’s as broad as Ethan’s, even if it _is_ sweatier.

It’s strange in the truck without music, but Dean doesn’t want to pull his hand back, even for a second. Maybe Ethan’s thinking the same thing, because after that they ride in silence, watching the sun sink lower over the cornfields and peach orchards that spread in all directions on either side of the highway. They keep the glaring white orb mostly to their right, heading south now.

 _Should be in St. Augustine by nightfall_.

An hour passes. Soon it’s time to get out the map, check the route before they get themselves really lost. Reluctantly, Dean slips his hand out of Ethan’s to shuffle through the road maps they’ve stashed between the front seats. But he stops when, instead of finding its place back on the steering wheel, Ethan’s thumb begins rubbing small circles across the worn, faded thigh of Dean's blue jeans. Dean lets the maps fall back into place, sits back.

“Fuck,” he mumbles. His head feels like it’s full of bees. Ethan’s hand slides up a few inches.  He glances at Dean’s face, a victorious smile playing on his lips.

“Want me to stop?”

“ _Nuh-uh_ ,” Dean mumbles vehemently. Ethan grins. His hand takes another inch.

“No, I mean, you wanna pull over?”

Meeting Ethan’s eyes, Dean nods furiously. It takes a while after that to find a good pull-off. The whole time, Dean’s lungs seem to have forgotten their full capacity, and Ethan’s thumb keeps making lazy, gentle circles, traveling up Dean’s leg so slowly, Dean thinks he’ll die before they find a place to stop.

It’s four-oh-nine on the dash clock when Ethan finally pulls the truck into a long dirt lane. Corn rises up on either side, as tall as the truck, or almost. Overhead, a hawk circles the sun. Ethan shifts into park, turns the key, unbuckles his seatbelt.

“C’mon.”

And, with a flash of a smile, Ethan’s gone. Dean exits on his own side. When he reaches the back of the truck, Ethan’s already got the tailgate down. He gestures for Dean to climb up first. With limbs that feel utterly out of his own control and blood rushing in his ears, Dean does.

Once he climbs in, though, he doesn’t know what to do. _Lie down? Stand up_? Instead, he shifts to the far end of the bed and turns to face Ethan, spine flat against the rear window of the cab. Even through the denim of his jeans, the metal’s hot on the backs of Dean’s thighs. The burn grounds him, helps him catch his breath.

 _This is happening. This is really happening_.

A second later, Ethan pulls himself up into the narrow bed. He kneels over Dean, his body shading Dean’s skin so that, even with his eyes closed, Dean feels the cool of the shadow. They share a long look—a look in which Ethan’s blue eyes are asking something, and Dean’s are answering. Then the older boy’s hands find Dean’s thighs, slide up toward his hips, down again. Their mouths meet. This time, Ethan’s tongue traces along Dean’s, making Dean’s stomach leap.

One of Ethan’s hands travels up his leg until it rests just below Dean’s hip, toying idly with the fabric at the waist of his jeans. The other slides under Dean’s t-shirt, playing across his ribs. At first, Dean’s paralyzed, barely able to breathe, not wanting to move for fear the hands will withdraw. Then, as the pounding in his ears slowly lessens, he gets the idea to slide his own hands up and down Ethan’s back. First, over the shirt. Then Dean’s hand catches on the hem, and he feels Ethan’s skin against his palms, warm and smooth.

Ethan grins, pulls back from Dean long enough to look him in the face again. Dean runs his eyes over the other boy, greedy, breathless. Unsure what to do next.

“Take this off,” Ethan pants, tugging at Dean’s collar before pulling his own white t-shirt over his head. Bare, Ethan’s arms and shoulders glow golden in the late afternoon sun, and the smooth indentations just inside his hips make Dean swallow convulsively. Dean struggles out of his own shirt, a hand-me-down from John, and flings it over the side.

Then, in one smooth, sudden motion, Ethan seizes Dean’s ankles, pulls him down into the bed of the truck. Sunbaked metal sears the bare skin of Dean’s shoulder blades. He doesn’t even think about pulling away, though. Ethan’s kneeling above him now, his knees planted on either side of Dean’s waist, his mouth inches from Dean’s own. On impulse, Dean reaches up with one hand, trailing his fingers down Ethan’s bare chest and stomach until he’s touching the button at the top of the older boy’s jeans. Ethan’s grin widens.

“Hang on,” he says huskily, removing Dean’s hand, and at first Dean’s disappointed. But then Ethan presses his hips slowly and firmly into Dean’s, lowering his head so his lips touch Dean’s neck. Dean draws in a ragged breath against the warm skin of Ethan’s shoulder. Arching his spine, he snakes his hand around Ethan’s waist, slipping his fingers under the hem at the small of Ethan’s back, pressing him closer. It’s Ethan’s turn to shudder.

After that, it’s a race—unbuttoning, unzipping, tugging fabric, laughing when Ethan’s pants get tangled around his shoes. Dean keeps catching Ethan’s eye, afraid he’ll see hesitation, but there’s only the same want, the same need.

“What if someone comes?” Dean pants once he's down to his boxers. The sun seems suddenly over-bright, the corn not tall enough.

“Nobody’s been here in ages.” Ethan points to weeds growing in the muddy ruts beyond the tailgate. “Trust me.”

And he’s right. No one comes. The sun sinks until rustling cornstalk shadows float in blue ripples across the steel bed. Cicadas start to hum. Dean notices it all in spurts of clarity—moments when he opens his eyes, every nerve singing, to find a barn swallow dancing overhead or a spear of pink sunset glinting off the driver's side mirror. The moments in between, he’s wrapped up in Ethan.

The tender touches soon turn into a kind of play fighting match, with Ethan wrestling Dean to the flatbed, letting him up, slipping his hands down the back of Dean’s shorts, kissing him roughly, pinning him down again. He’s careful, though—careful not to hurt Dean. Remembering the bloody nose from before, Dean doesn’t fight back too hard. Just hard enough to spark a fierce, laughing blue glint in Ethan’s eyes. It’s a look Dean’s never seen before, and he finds he’s dying to see it again the moment it fades.

Then Ethan changes the rules. He lets Dean pin him, and Dean finds himself looking down instead of up. Beneath him on the cooling metal, Ethan’s breathing hard, staring up at Dean with his wrists trapped in Dean’s hands. Dean releases them, trails one finger over Ethan’s throat. Ethan shivers, waits. Dean knows it’s an invitation. _We can do it this way, if you want_.

But, all at once, Dean knows what he wants. Rolling so Ethan’s on top again, he grabs Ethan’s hand, presses it against front of his shorts. Immediately, he sees the glint in Ethan’s eyes again and knows it’s the right move.

Ethan teases Dean through the thin fabric, running his fingers over Dean’s hips, between Dean’s thighs, up and down Dean’s length until Dean feels like begging. Finally, he pulls Dean’s shorts down and takes Dean into his mouth.

“ _Fuuuuck_.”  

At Dean’s involuntary murmur Ethan surfaces for a second, grinning. Then he’s at it again, and Dean’s writhing underneath him, fingers scraping metal before they tangle in Ethan’s hair.

Too soon, though, Ethan lifts his head. Dean mumbles something like a plea, tugging on the hair twined through his fingers, but Ethan just ducks out of his reach, a smile playing around his lips.

“Wait,” he promises, and then he’s tilting Dean’s legs up, pressing on the backs of Dean’s thighs with his palms, positioning himself between them. Dean feels the blood leave his face.

_This is it._

He expects pain— stares up at the streaks of gold in the sky and braces for it. But it doesn’t come. When he lifts his head, Ethan’s watching him.

“Hey,” he says gently, leaning forward over Dean until their faces are nearly touching. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You know that, right?”

Dean tries to shrug, but it’s hard lying down. “It's cool. I can take it.”

Ethan snorts. “That’s not what I mean. I’ve seen you hunt. That shifter threw you, what, ten feet? I would’ve bitched and moaned the whole ride back, but you didn’t say a word.”

Dean tilts his chin up, tries to smile. “Looked worse than it was.”

Ethan eyes him seriously for a long moment, traces the barest shadow of a yellow-green bruise still haunting Dean’s collarbone. “You know, Dean, just because you can handle something, that doesn’t mean you should have to.”

Dean looks up at him, jaw clenched now, sure he’s ruined this, that it’s over. His heart starts a free fall through his chest. “Does that mean you wont…?”

But Ethan laughs. “Shit, Dean. You think I’m gonna just walk away from you right now? You think I even _can_?” Dean doesn’t trust himself to answer, so after a second, Ethan answers for him. “C’mon, man. Not a chance.”

And then, instead of pulling away, he kisses Dean long and hard. Taking advantage of the moment, Dean wraps his legs around Ethan’s waist, holding him there. When their lips break apart, Ethan grins. The glint’s back in his eyes.

“Just trust me,” he breathes into Dean’s ear.

And Dean does.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much to everybody who's been reading, and especially those of you who've commented. You're the best! This chapter's where things start getting a bit darker, but don't worry: there are still some more wholesome Ethan flashbacks to come. Hope you enjoy!

“Dean? Dude, where have you been?”

Sam’s pushing through the undergrowth, emerging from the overgrown trail with concern etched on every line of his face. Dean realizes he’s got one hand down the front of his pants just fast enough to snatch it back. He’s lying on that same rock by the river like no time’s passed, but overhead, the sun’s half done setting.

 _Crap._ Dean struggles to his feet.

“Just enjoying the natural beauty, Sammy. Don’t call it the great outdoors for nothing.”

Sam eyes him for a second, shakes his head. “I thought you hated camping.”

Dean shrugs. Sam purses his lips.

“Whatever, dude. I got the tent set up.”

“Cool. I got water.” Dean holds up the canteen. “C’mon.”

All the way back to the campsite, Sam walks a little ways behind. From his silence, Dean can tell he’s still suspicious. _Kid’s gonna go full-on shrink_. _Wanna hug it out, or something._  Kicking himself for falling asleep— _or whatever that was_ —Dean watches the sun fade with growing dread.

By the time they make it back, lightning bugs are lifting off out of the laurel. While Sam’s coaxing damp wood into a hazy, smoke-suffocated blaze, Dean finds himself staring off into the trees, lost in thought.  Soon, the last dusky greens have darkened. Far off across the mountain, a screech owl cries.

“Take it in shifts?”

Dean starts, glances over at Sam. “Huh?”

“The watch. Take it in shifts?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sounds good. I’ve got first. You look like you could use some shut-eye.”

“You sure?”

Sam’s watching Dean closely, trying to unravel the situation. Dean sits down on one of the logs by the fire, makes himself comfortable.

“Trust me, Sammy. This thing’s strongest right around witching hour. Could be a long night.”

It’s a lie. A liderc can strike anytime, so long as there’s not a full moon. So far, this one hasn’t shown any kind of pattern. _This is unfinished business, though. And it’s impatient. Hungry. It won’t wait long_. Fiddling in his pocket, Dean draws out his lighter, turns it over in his hand.

“You sure you’re ok, man?”

“I’m good.”

Sam hesitates, though.

 _He knows. He always knows_. The night air is lead in Dean’s lungs.

“It’s just, I’ve been having thoughts. You know. About Jess. Stuff I haven’t thought about much in a long time. It’s this thing, right? Some kind of magic?”

“You could call it that.”

“Right. So, if it’s got me thinking back to college, and Jess…”

Dean glances up, flicks the lighter idly open, closed again. “Dude. Chill. I’m not gonna go all Girl Interrupted on you. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, man. But you’ve never talked about it. And I’m not just talking about the stuff in the mountains.”

Dean wrinkles his forehead. “Whaddya mean?”

“I mean, that same summer, there was the thing with that other hunting family. The Hales?”

Dean sticks out the toe of one boot, nudges the fungus glowing on an unburnt log at his feet.

“You remember that?”

“Yeah. I mean, not much.” Sam admits. “I think Mrs. Hale babysat me for a while.”

“Just a week.”

Sam shrugs. “Sure. It’s just, I’m remembering now. Didn’t they get wiped out by vamps a couple days after Dad grabbed us and took off? Some kind of revenge killing?”

“Huh.” Dean flicks the lighter open, wills his hands to hold the flame steady. “Thought you’d be too young to remember. You’re like that dude from Criminal Minds. The weird, tall one. What do they call it?”

"Eidetic memory. But that's not what this is, Dean. It's just... growing up, even when you're pretty young, certain things stand out. I didn't really realize it before. But, with everything that's been happening, I've been thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

"About you, Dean. About how you changed that summer."

Sam studies Dean for what feels like an eternity while Dean studies the flame of the lighter. The screech owl screams again. Heat flares against Dean’s fingers.

“Dude,” Sam prompts.

“What do you want me to say? I knew the kid for what, a week? It was sad. I got over it.”

“Sure,” Sam allows. “All I’m saying is, you seemed upset.”

“I’m good.” Dean leans back, affects an amused smile. “Seriously, man. Unbunch your panties.”

“I’m not talking about now, Dean. I’m talking about that summer. The day Dad broke the news.”

_Oh._

Dean swallows. “I mean, yeah. It was rough. Always hard, when it’s someone you’ve hunted with. Not just another nameless face. But it wasn’t like I knew them real well. Not like Bobby, or Jo, or Ash. I mean, the list goes on.”

Sam looks off into the woods, clears his throat. “You spent two hours in the shower that night, Dean.”

“Did I?” Dean raises his eyebrows, like he doesn’t remember. Then he smirks. “Best guess? I probably lifted a skin mag from the gas station, had to rub one out. Took a lot of long showers back in the day. C’mon, Sammy. I was thirteen.”

“Yeah, that’s what I used to think.”

“'Cause that’s what it was. Jesus,” Dean rolls his eyes, “weren’t you ever a teenager?”

“I _used_ to think that’s what you were doing,” Sam continues, like Dean hasn’t spoken, “and maybe nine times out of ten, I would’ve been right. But not that time.”

Unbidden, an image flashes across Dean’s mind. He sees himself huddled on the tile, ribs heaving, biting down on his knuckles to stifle the sound. Water pounds his shoulders, white noise drowning the deep, shaky breaths between sobs.

“Look,” he starts, still smiling. “I dunno what you think you know—”

“It’s ok, Dean. You know that, right? You were a kid. You lost a friend.”

A mosquito whines in Dean’s ear, and he reaches to swat it away. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, a lot happened that summer. And if there’s anything I need to know… I need you to tell me, man.”

The screech owl lets out an agonized wail.

 _Closer_.

Dean flicks the lighter closed for the last time, slips it back into his pocket.

“Nothing to tell, Sammy. And that’s the truth. So, you gonna hit the sack, or what?”

It’s clear conversation-ender. Rising toward the fire, Dean snaps a branch in two for a poker, gives the faltering blaze his full attention. Sam sighs. After a second more of Dean’s absorbed silence, he gives up. There’s the sound of the tent zipper sliding open and shut, and for a second Sam’s gangly outline fumbles around inside, backlit by a bluish, battery-operated lantern. Then the light blinks out. A twig snaps somewhere outside the circle of firelight. Dean settles back onto the log, tilts his chin up. Overhead, the clawed silhouettes of beetle-eaten branches and a thin coat of fleecy clouds veil the stars. There’s no moon.

 _I’m the one you want, you sick son of a bitch_ , Dean thinks, sending the message out into the forest. _So come and get me_.

He waits ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty.

The heat of the blaze sinks into the skin of Dean’s face, seeps through his jeans. Normally, he’d keep his back to the fire, face out into the night. This time, there’s no point. It’s like watching a kettle boil.

_Thing likes sneaking up on people. Sooner I give it what it wants, sooner this’ll be over._

But, staring into the fire, there’s the pitfall always at the back of his mind—the urge to slip into another time, another place. Even when he tries to shut it out, it’s there. John’s flickering orange silhouette lurking in the corner of Dean’s eye, his voice in the back of Dean’s head. The same gravel underfoot. A different night.

Back then, John had been impatient—hollow with the kind of hunger Dean recognized even then. It was the kind of restless appetite only a good hunt could sate.

“Hey. Get your head in the game, Dean. Pack those shells tight.”

At the words, Dean had jumped, cast a sideways glance over where his father stood holding a dogwood branch over the fire. The smell of burning flowers, at once sweet and itchy, tickled the back of Dean’s throat.

“Bobby said rock salt won’t work on a liderc.”

John’s eyes never left the blistering, crumbling flowers in front of him.

“You take your orders from Bobby Singer?”

Dean flushed. “No, sir.”

“Bobby don’t know everything, son. Never hurts to be prepared.”

Except, holding those shells in his hand, Dean knew it _could_ hurt. He’d caught spray from a salt blast not that long ago—bound to happen, fighting in close quarters—and he still had the constellation of scabs across his upper arm to prove it. But he didn’t say that. Didn’t say anything. Instead, he packed the rock salt tight as he could, grinding the crystals against each other until no air remained. John pulled the branch from the fire, held it close to his body so the sweet smoke penetrated every fiber of John’s clothes, sank into his pores. Far off in the night, an owl cried.

“I’ll be about half a mile out,” John finally said, turning to inspect Dean’s work. When his father’s eyes met his, Dean stood automatically at attention, unsteady hands clasped to his sides. “Smoke off that branch does what it’s supposed to, the thing won’t be able to catch my scent.”

Dean nodded. It was a consecrated branch—blessed by a priest, still flowering eight days after it’d been cut. If anything would do the trick, the lore said that stick of dogwood was it.

“Thing won’t strike til it knows you’re alone. Probably take off, if I show my face. It’s strong enough to kill, but, if we’re lucky, it won’t see a reason. Keep the shotgun out of sight. Only use it as a last resort. You need anything, Dean, you yell. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

 _But I won’t_ , Dean remembers thinking. _I won’t let you down._

It wasn’t just stubbornness—though that was some of it. Of course it was. Dean had never been able to shake the starving urge to hear those words: “You won’t believe what my boy did.” Dean knew the rare glint of pride in his father’s eyes, a look at once sadder and stronger than a smile. He'd wanted that, sure. Wanted it so bad, he’d thrown himself at shifters head-on, crawled into dark holes too small for a grown man to fit, sat all night with a tire iron trembling in his hand, ringed with salt, watching the lights of some stranger’s house flicker. But this wasn’t really about that. Wasn’t just about Dean at all.

It was Sam, too. It was the tight place in Dean’s chest, the part of him that remembered a time before he’d been his father’s soldier, before the orders, before there’d been anything Dean could do to stem the grief. Back then, before the hate in John’s heart had worn its single-minded channel, Mary Winchester’s widower might as well have been a shotgun shell packed with salt, ready to go off.

 _Bam_. One wrong word, maybe even just walking into the room at the wrong time. That was all it took.

 _Wasn’t that bad,_ Dean reminds himself _. Nothing I couldn’t walk away from_. Still, that John Winchester had been more than hard, worse than cold. He’d been unpredictable. Explosive.

Dean rubs his shoulder where the pockmarked scars used to be. _That’s the thing about salt_ , he muses. _Won’t kill you. Most of the time, won’t even leave a lasting mark. And that’s supposed to make it okay. Almost makes you forget the fact it hurts like hell_.

Back when Sam had been a baby and only Dean was around to remember, Dean had found himself caught in the scatter pattern of more than one of John’s rages. Then, gradually, before Sam was old enough to remember anything, it’d stopped. John had found himself a better, more worthy target, gone from being a shotgun to being a rifle, and Dean had breathed a sigh of relief. He’d come to stand behind his father, and if the recoil hurt, it was nothing compared to the blasts he’d endured before.

 _It can’t go back to the way it was_. That had been Dean’s foremost thought that night. If Mary Winchester were allowed to walk those woods, it might undo all the progress they’d made. Dean wasn’t going to let that happen. Not with Sammy old enough to remember. He remembers staring at his father’s back, watching the black of his coat disappear into the dark.

Then the vision’s gone. Dean glances around, listens hard. There’s the crackling of the fire, the roll of distant thunder.

_Still nothing._

Kicking a rotting branch deeper into the fire, Dean checks his watch. _Midnight_. The fire crackles and spits, choking on moldy wood. Then, behind Dean, almost too quiet to hear, comes a voice.

“Good to see you, Dean. I see you got my message.”

Dean’s shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t turn around. He stares past the fire, at the tent where Sam’s still sleeping.

“Screw you.” He keeps his voice low. “You Amish, or something? Out in the real world, we have cell phones. If you wanted me, you could’ve just called.”

“You’re a hard man to find.”

Dean digs his fingers into the knees of his jeans.

“Well, congratu-frigging-lations. You’ve got my attention. I’ve just got one condition. You leave Sam alone. Do that, I’m all yours.”

The creature laughs softly. “Do you have any idea how very predictable you are, Dean? Sammy this. Sammy that. Suffice to say, I planned ahead. Your brother’s…shall we say, incapacitated. Needle to the neck through the side of the tent. Should wake up with a real nice migraine.”

Dean swallows hard. Suddenly, the woods feel bigger, darker. Fighting the urge to run, Dean stares into the fire. “What do you want me to say?”

“A little thanks would be nice. Thought some privacy was what you wanted.”

“Why not just kill him? Hell, why not just kill us both?”

“Oh, come on, Dean. A man's gotta eat. And I’m a bit of a connoisseur. Sudden grief clouds the emotions. Works for a cheap trick, sure. Somebody with no real layers, gets the juices flowing. But you’ve got more than that to offer. Kill Sammy, I’d get nothing but crying and whining. I’m counting on more out of you.”

Dean already figured as much. Still, it should be a relief to know he’s right. _Sammy’s safe. And he won’t know. Won’t find out_. Slowly he makes himself rise, turns to face the dark woods’ edge. He already knows what he’ll see.

“Hey, Dean. Miss me?”

It’s Ethan. Sun-browned skin glowing in the firelight. Long, tan limbs. Crooked white grin. Dean fights to keep his breathing even. Deliberately, he gives the creature an appraising once-over, smirks.

“Guess it’s true what they say. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

The creature smiles cruelly, the expression odd on Ethan’s lips. “Oh, don’t worry, Dean. I’ve got a whole bag of tricks saved up just for you.”

Dean eyes the thing with false, clinical interest, gives a low whistle. “Damn. Those hikers weren’t kidding. You really have gone full-on psycho. Too bad my dad ganked your little buddy. Twenty-odd years is a long time to hunt alone.”

The thing behind Ethan’s eyes watches Dean closely, a new heat behind its gaze now.

“Long time, sure,” it agrees. “But then, you know what that’s like, Dean. I’m sorry, by the way. For your loss. Or maybe I should say _losses_ ,” the thing corrects, punctuating the statement with one of Ethan’s careless grins. “You’ve been busy since we last met. People around you dropping like flies. Really gives something like me some scope for the imagination.”

Dean steps to the side, circling the creature, trying to look past it instead of at it—to see a blur, a shadow, not Ethan. It doesn’t work. It’s like staring at words on a page and trying not to read them. The letters put themselves together against your will, and your brain interprets without trying. There’s no point. Dean’s fists clench.

“You go right ahead. Shift into whoever you want. Just try to hurry it up. I’m missing Game of Thrones. Gotta find out whether the grumpy bastard’s gonna bang the white-haired chick.”

Ethan smiles. “Always the bravado. You know, Dean, you haven’t really changed.”  He steps forward, trails one hand slowly down Dean’s arm. Then, quicker than the blink of an eye, he’s not Ethan, but Jo. Her fingers crawl up his shoulder to settle cool and soft against Dean’s cheek. Dean doesn’t flinch, tries to look amused.

“Maybe you didn’t get the memo, but Jo and me, we’re square. Caught up with her ghost a few years back. She was more like my kid sister, anyway.”

The creature wearing Jo’s face just smiles, runs her hand back down Dean’s arm. Then Dean blinks, and she’s gone. Now, standing close enough to touch, there’s Benny—broad-chested, grinning, casting an enormous shadow in the flickering dark behind him. He claps Dean on the back, pulls him into a bear hug.

“Long time, no see. How you been, brother?”

It’s all exactly the same—the warm Louisiana accent, the sweet tobacco smell, the heavy slap of his palm against Dean’s shoulder blades. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I’ve missed you.” Benny’s hand moves to the small of Dean’s back, presses. “Missed you real bad. Can’t wait to get reacquainted.”

Dean scoffs, extricates himself from the embrace as calmly as he can. “Hold on now. I never banged Benny. Never even got close.”

Benny smiles. “But, real deep down, you wanted to. See, that’s the real sad part. You could’a had me, Dean. Could’a had me for real. It’s all up here,” he taps Dean’s temple. “All those looks. Open invitations. Even from strangers.”

As he speaks, what used to be Benny starts looking a lot like a guy Dean caught staring at a bar, once—high cheekbones, interested eyes. Dean vaguely remembers staring back, toying with the idea. He never went through with it, though. He’d paid his tab quick, made a break for the door as soon as Sam got out of the bathroom. _Poor guy must be dead, now._

“All the times you could’a had something more. What happened, Dean?”

And then it’s Ethan standing there again, looking at Dean the way he used to—like Dean’s something beautiful and fragile and important. He stays that way, mouth inches from Dean’s, breath tickling Dean’s neck.

Dean takes another calm step back, chuckles.

“Man. You must want me pretty bad. I mean, can’t really blame you.” Dean spreads his hands, smirking. “I’ve been told I’m hard to resist.”

The creature doesn’t laugh.

“You’re right, Dean.” Ethan’s eyes go earnest. “I never forgot you.” He closes the distance between them again, presses something into Dean’s hand. Dean knows what it is before he looks.

“Huh.” He opens his palm, studies the strip of brown material. “You screwed up a perfectly good leather jacket. I take that real personal. I mean, if I wasn’t gonna ice you before—”

“See,” Ethan’s eyes light up with a grin. “That’s what I’m talking about, Dean. That’s what makes you my favorite.”

Dean feels his jaw tighten, but he smiles anyway. “Oh, I’m everybody’s favorite.”

“Not Daddy’s though. Got that much off him, last time. Real weird vibe when it came to you. I’ll bet he preferred Sammy in there. Right?” Dean keeps an amused smile pasted on, fighting back a shiver as Ethan’s warm fingers skim over the skin just above his belt. “Nothing to say to that? Too bad. You were real talkative, last time around.”

An image flashes in Dean’s mind—a still frame of Ethan leaning above him, knife in hand. Without meaning to, Dean takes a faltering step back. The creature grins. Then it presses its palm—Ethan’s palm—against Dean’s neck, and this time Dean doesn’t just remember. He’s _there_ , stretched out on the ratty old sleeping bag they’d borrowed from Bobby, and Ethan’s holding him down, whispering in his ear. Hurting him.

 _Stop_.

Dean doesn’t realize he’s fallen until he feels the gravel digging into his knees. Air refuses to fill his lungs. The creature laughs.

“Why’d you come, Dean? You had to know how this would go. You can’t fight me.”

“Those people,” Dean growls through gritted teeth, struggling to his feet. “All those people you hurt.”

“Ohhhh. So it’s the family business. You really haven’t changed at all. But Dean, I have one question for you.”

Dean brushes gravel from his knees. “Oh? What’s that?”

“How are you planning on making it out of these woods alive?”

“Nah, man,” Dean shakes his head, makes himself meet the thing’s eyes. “See, you’re asking the wrong questions. Question is, how’re _you_? Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not some pie-in-the-sky kid, this time around.”

“No.” The liderc smiles brightly. “That’s true. You think you’re stronger. Is that right? Think you can do what you so spectacularly failed to do last time?”

Dean doesn’t answer.

“That’s what’s so interesting about you, Dean,” the thing goes on, it’s eyes traveling over every inch of Dean’s body, taking him in. “You think you’re ready for this, just like you did last time. But the truth is, you’re weaker than you were then. I can feel it on your skin, breathe it in the air you’ve breathed. You’re damaged. You’re like a river that’s been dammed in a hundred places. Ready to burst.”

The creature steps forward too fast to see, slides one finger down Dean’s ribs, and suddenly he’s back in the bed of the truck with Ethan, panting under rippling blue shadows with that coiling, flying feeling welling up in his chest. It’s a second before finds the sense to jerk away. When he does, his heart’s going a mile a minute.

“Enjoy that? I don’t mind giving you a little something for your trouble, Dean. All you have to do is give me what I want.”

But Dean remembers too much from last time to believe it. There’s the false music of Ethan’s voice crooning in his ear, the pressure of his hands grinding Dean’s wrists into the gravel. _Come on, Dean. Relax. You know I’m not gonna hurt you, right? Trust me._

Dean forces a small smile. “I don’t know, man. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Doesn’t what bother me?” The creature’s tone is curious. It’s happy Dean’s playing along.

Dean shrugs. “You’ll never be the real thing. Your best act is a cheap imitation, and you can’t even get that right.”

“Oh? What detail did I get wrong?” The creature flashes one of Ethan’s white grins, draws closer to Dean. “Is it the skin?” Dean shivers as Ethan’s hands crawl under the hem of his shirt. “Or is it the voice?” Ethan’s breath tingles in Dean’s ear. “ _Trust me_. Isn’t that what I said, over and over? Didn’t I touch you—” he flattens one palm against the front of Dean’s blue jeans—“just like this?”

Dean swallows, tries to focus on the pinprick of a star through the black filter of branches.

“Face it, Dean. You liked it. You remember, right? All the time I had you here, all the ways I hurt you, and you never—you _never_ —told me no.”

Dean wracks his brain for a witty comeback, but there’s nothing. Just pathetic excuses. _I was a kid_. _I missed him_. _You would’ve done it all anyway_. _I didn’t have a choice_. Instead, he glares. The creature smiles back.

“You can try to run. Go ahead. I’ll give you a head start.”

Dean remains, feet firmly planted. “Nah. Think I’ll pass.”

As if by magic, the creature appears behind him, crossing the campsite in a fraction of a second. “Right choice. Would’ve broken your legs. That’s one of the things I like about you, Dean. Smarter than Daddy ever gave you credit for.”

Then he’s right at Dean’s back, gripping Dean’s shoulders. Pain flares at back of Dean’s knee, and he stumbles, falls.

“Remember, kiddo,” the creature reminds him, circling back around, grabbing Dean’s jaw to force his gaze up, tapping Dean’s temple again. “The fight’s up here.”

Dean’s sure this is it—the moment it’ll start for real. He’s ready. But then Ethan stands back, flashes a sad kind of grin, and it’s just like that day, just like the second before John peeled out of the drive. He stands, raises one hand in a wave.

“Bye, Dean.”

And he’s gone.

Dean blinks. For a second, there’s silence.

_Is it over?_

_Can’t be._ Still, he finds himself getting to his feet. Grimacing, he straightens out his knee, assesses the damage. _Torn ligament. Son of a bitch_. He grits his teeth. The fire flickers, flares suddenly brighter.

And then he hears it. A voice from the shadows, faceless. But Dean knows the cadence of the voice by heart. Doesn’t have to see. His heart, already running ragged, stops.

“Get on the ground, son. That’s an order.”


	8. Chapter 8

Dean can’t move. It’s like his feet have grown roots, like the air around him has turned solid. Slowly, the tall form in the shadows draws closer, until the firelight reveals what Dean’s dying not to see.

“On the ground, Dean. I won’t say it again.”

John’s beard and hair show barely a hint of gray. He’s younger than he was when he died. A replica of the legendary hunter in his prime, just the way Dean always remembers him. Dean swallows.

“What the—”

The thing’s on him in an instant with a blow to Dean’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him, laying him flat. John plants one knee in the middle of Dean’s back, leans one hand on the back of Dean’s neck, pressing his face into the rocky earth. Dean stifles a groan.

“I give you an order,” John rumbles, “I expect to see it followed. Understand?”

Dean just lies there, motionless, frozen. He feels the weight on his back grow, feels his face driven harder into the gravel. Then, when that doesn’t get a reaction, the thing wearing John’s skin grips one wrist and twists Dean’s arm behind his back. Dean’s shoulder screams in protest.

“You understand, Dean?”

Dean answers without thinking. Without stopping to cry out.

“Yes, Sir.”

Then, all at once, the thing eases up its grip. Laughs.

“Oh, good job, Dean. This is turning out to be more fun that I thought.”

It releases Dean’s neck, pins his wrist so the inside’s facing out. Dean winces at the pressure on his elbow, but he doesn’t make a sound.

 _Get it together_ , he thinks. _This isn’t Dad. It’s just a meatsuit. You can do this._

The creature fumbles with something for a second, fingers feeling for the veins under Dean’s skin, and then there’s a sharp pain at Dean’s wrist, familiar as the crackling of the fire or the sound of boots on gravel. Dean can feel the blood trickling from the wound, knows what’s coming next. Still, the warm mouth on his skin makes his heart skip a beat. Ignoring the ache of gravel against his cheek, Dean watches a velvety ant scuttle across the ground, its poison-warning red painted redder by the light of the fire. _You sting me right now, I’ll kill you_ , he thinks in the insect’s direction and tries to be pissed.

“Mmmmmm-mm. Finger-licking good.” The creature pulls back, releases Dean’s arm. He stays still under the weight, mind racing for a way out, but the thing won’t shut up. “You’re an experiment. You know that, Dean? Not my only experiment—I’m curious by nature—but I think, now all’s said and done, you’re turning out to be my best one.”

“Great,” Dean mutters, as if to himself. “Thing thinks it’s friggin Bill Nye.”

Instantly, a stabbing pain makes him catch his breath. On instinct, he freezes, and for a second, he thinks it’s over. But then the creature twists the tiny, ceremonial knife it uses in place of fangs, driving it further into Dean’s back. _Sonofabitch_. Dean arches his spine, trying to throw the thing off him. It’s useless. Just digs the blade deeper. Dimly, he recognizes the drip of warm blood down his side, hears the first drop hit the gravel.

“Quit squirming, Dean,” the thing commands in John’s low, calm tones. “You know better. A man faces the consequences of his actions. Shirking punishment’s a coward’s game. Are you a coward, son?”

 _No, sir_.

Dean hears his own, wobbly voice the back of his mind—a slice of a memory coming at him, bearing down with all the force of a freight train. Then the knife withdraws, and John’s broad, callused hand slides under Dean’s shirt, blood-slick palm covering the wound. Dean feels the magic before it really hits him, like you hear the twisted metal sound of a tornado before you see it.

Then he’s thirteen again, standing with his hands pressed to the sun-heated hood of the Impala, his pants around his ankles.

There’s the sound of John unbuckling his belt, leather sliding like satin through worn denim belt loops. Then there’s the pause—the part Dean always hated most. The moment when all you can do is wait. When the temptation to squirm and beg gets almost too much to bear.

 _Whap_.

The belt sings on its way through the air, ignites a strip of fiery pain across Dean’s thighs. Choking back a cry, he makes his feet stay where they belong, rooted to the dust. Without meaning to, he glances up from the shiny black paint between his hands, catches a glimpse of John’s raised arm in the windshield reflection. Squeezes his eyes shut.

 _Whap_.

Dean bites down on his lip, hard. Tastes blood. He stands there for what feels like hours, and every time he thinks it must be almost over, it’s not. He doesn’t ask, though. He knows better. Doesn’t cry out. Doesn’t flinch or try to change positions, even when the belt finds the same section of skin over and over.  He used to count the blows—used to think that helped. There’d even been a dark kind of pride. _Thirty-one_ , he’d think to himself, _and I didn’t cry_. _Fifty-three_. _Sixty_.

But he’s done with that, now. Too old for it.

When it’s finally over, John takes his time threading his belt back through the loops. Only when he hears his father’s footsteps recede, hears the driver’s side door slam, does Dean dare to move. The fabric of his jeans stings like nettles as he pulls it over his skin, buckles his own belt. He takes a step, testing. Sucks in a breath.

The sound of the Impala’s radio fills the field where they’ve pulled off, electric guitar and drums out of sync with the blue Missouri air, the wide open space full of nothing but wheat and whining insects. Dean walks slowly around the car, climbs into the passenger’s seat. Sitting hurts like hell, but Dean doesn’t say anything. They don’t talk about what the belting was for. In fact, it’s the only thing Dean can’t remember.

Gunning the engine, John turns up the music and paints a trail of dust behind them. Daylight recedes into black.

_Fuck._

The liderc wrenches Dean’s shoulder, grabs his chin with one hand, licks the blood from the other, making Dean watch as he tastes the memory.

“Not bad,” it says once it’s licked its hand clean. “Pain’s not very filling, but it’s sure tasty. My favorite, though—can you guess, Dean, what my favorite part of that little cocktail was?”

Dean scoffs. “You’re a real sicko, you know that?”

The thing smiles, unoffended. “It’s the shame. The embarrassment. Thirteen years old, and still letting Daddy beat the hell out of you. Still not strong enough to stop him. And the anger.”

Dean frowns. “I wasn’t angry.”

The thing looks at him the same way John used to look when he knew Dean was lying—look that goes straight through him. “You don’t have to put on an act with me, Dean. You can admit it. You hated your father. You wanted to hit him back. Wanted to make him hurt, like he hurt you.”

“Now you really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dean mutters. “Wasn’t like that.”

But the thing just smiles a satisfied smile, like Dean’s said exactly what it hoped he would. Dean glares, jerks his chin out of the thing’s grip. His mind’s still racing, panicked. _It’s not right._ That’s all he can think. _Wasn’t supposed to go this way. Against the rules_.

As if the thing can read his mind, it chuckles.

“Really throwing you for a loop, isn’t it? All this Daddy Dearest stuff?”

Dean realizes his breath’s coming in short gasps. He makes himself breathe out, one long, slow exhale. Then he grunts.

“Not really. I just think you’re confused.”

The thing laughs, a full-out, whole-hearted laugh Dean rarely heard from his father. “Oh, I know what I’m doing. That you can count on.”

Dean spits blood, tries to get a look at the stars. _How much time’s passed?_ But there’s not a single pinprick of light left in the sky. He clenches his jaw.

“There was nothing like… _that_ … between me and Dad. Nothing. So if that’s what you’re going for, you’re a pretty sick puppy.”

The thing just sighs. “Oh, come on, Dean. Don’t you get it? Love, lust, fear, obsession. They’re all the same, down at the root. You might not have fucked your big, handsome, demon-hunting dad,” it continues, leaning down until Dean can feel the tickle of beard against his ear, “but you sure as hell were obsessed. You worshipped me, Dean. Would’ve done anything to win my approval. Would’ve let me do anything to you, if it meant I’d look at you with even just a little pride. And you know why you never got the thing you were so desperate for?”

Dean smirks, shifts under the creature’s weight. “You’re way off-base. All the way to crazy-town.”

The thing ignores this. “Daddy never could give you the love you wanted because you wanted it too much. You were clingy. Needy. Pathetic. No one likes a kicked dog, Dean. At least Sammy had a spine.”

Dean’s lungs feel like they’ve shrunk. He draws in a deep breath. He’s about to say something snarky, about to try to throw the thing off him again, when another sound knocks the air right back out of his chest.

“Dean?”

It’s Sam’s voice, groggy and slurred. There’s the sound of the tent zipper starting to open. Dean’s skin goes cold all over. Urgently, without thinking, he whispers to the thing on his back.

“No. _Please_.”

For a second, the thing doesn’t respond, and the zipper and the crackling fire are the only sounds. Then, suddenly, the pressure on Dean’s back releases. John’s low voice thrums in his ear.

“Tie him up. Do it quick, or I’ll make him watch.”

Dean’s stomach drops, and for a second he’s afraid he’s frozen permanently. But then, as if in a dream, he finds himself getting to his feet, standing in front of the tent. He blocks the view of the fire with his body, pushes Sam back inside. The thing tosses a coil of rope over. Without looking, Dean grabs it, moves inside the tent.

“Dean,” Sam mutters, eye’s half-lidded, “what’s going on?”

“Quiet, Sammy,” Dean grunts. “Hold still.”

He gathers Sam’s hands behind him, starts winding the rope tight as he can. Sam freezes for a second, begins to struggle. Dean flips him over, pinning him with one knee.

“You were drugged, Sammy,” he explains, keeping his voice low and calm. “It’s still wearing off. You’re not fit to hunt right now. But don’t worry. I’ve got this thing. It’s not gonna hurt anyone else.”

“Dean. What the hell?” Sam twists, cranes his neck to look at Dean. He’s waking up. Making things difficult. “You’re bleeding. Dean? Dean, stop.”

But Dean finishes the knots, finishes making sure they’ll hold. Sam thrashes, struggles. _Better gag him_ , Dean thinks, and tears a strip from the bottom of his shirt. _Can’t have him calling for help_. _Someone might actually hear, and then God knows what this thing’ll do_.

“I’ll come back for you,” he promises, unable to meet Sam’s glare. Then he ducks out of the dent, zips the door closed behind him. The thing’s waiting just outside the circle of firelight. It’s studying him.

 _Son of a bitch_. Dean takes a deep breath.

“Come here, Dean.”

Dean hesitates.

“Get your ass over here, son,” the thing says, barely loud enough to hear, “or I’ll raise my voice, and Sammy will put two and two together. He’s a smart kid. Smarter than you. But you know that.”

Dean grits his teeth, steps toward the creature until his face is inches from his father’s. Lifting one hand to grip Dean’s jaw, the thing guides Dean’s mouth to its own, pushes its tongue inside, bites down on Deans bleeding lower lip almost gently. Dean’s stomach roils, but he knows better than to pull away. Just stares into the dark until it’s done.

“Mmm.” The thing licks its lips, red with Dean’s blood. _Douchbag’s doing a taste test_ , Dean realizes. _Figuring out its next step_.

“I’m of two minds, now,” it muses. “Might be fun to have Sammy watch. Have a real family reunion.”

“ _No_.”

Dean almost barks the word, like he has some kind of power here—like he can give commands. John laughs softly.

“That’s what I love about you, Dean. Secrets. Can’t stand to share your pain with someone else, even if, in the end, it’d make it easier. Wouldn’t have to carry it alone. Don’t you think Sammy would care? Don’t you think, if he saw, he’d understand? Sympathize?”

Dean doesn’t answer.

“I don’t know, Dean. That’s quite a sizeable favor you’re asking. If you want me to pass up a perfectly good side dish, you’d better convince me you’re worth my time.”

Dean can barely get the word out. His jaw feels wired shut. “How?”

In answer, John’s hands find Dean’s shoulders. They press hard enough to be a command, but not hard enough to push Dean down. It’s still a choice. Dean’s call.

Which is how it was last time, too. He remembers that, now—recalls it with sudden clarity. Ethan’s voice, asking, probing. “I’ll stop, Dean. Just tell me to stop. Tell me if you can’t take it. Yell, Dean. Maybe your dad’ll come find you.” So that, in the end, it was Dean’s choice. Dean’s fault.

With a hollow ringing in his ears, Dean sinks to his knees.

“Just one question, Dean,” John’s low voice demands as he’s unbuckling, unzipping. “And you’ve got to be honest. That’s the deal.”

Dean studies the blue fabric in front of him, not looking up. “Whatever.”

John’s hand grabs Dean’s chin. “Is that how you talk to your father, boy?”

Dean swallows something bitter at the back of his throat. “No.”

“What’s that?”

“No, sir.”

“Now tell me you’ll answer honestly. Give me your word.”

Dean swallows again. “Okay. I, uh…I’ll tell the truth. You have my word.”

Dean doesn’t have to look up to know it’s there—the smile that says “that’s my boy,” the smile he’d have given anything, once, to earn.

“Tell me, Dean. If I’d made you kneel like this when you were thirteen and given you an order, what would you have done?”

Dean clears his throat. “I don’t know. That’s my honest answer. Can’t know if it didn’t happen. So, not to be rude or anything, but can you hurry this up? My knees are killing me.”

But the thing just stares patiently. “Think hard, Dean. Would you have talked back? Told the old man he was out of line?”

Dean hesitates, casts a glance back at the tent where Sam’s still shifting, grunting, trying to get free. He sighs. “No. I guess not.  That’s what you wanna hear, isn’t it? Sick bastard.”

“Would you have put up a fight? Made him work for it?”

“My father would’ve never given me an order like that,” Dean growls, “so it’s what Sam would call a hypothetical question. Doesn’t really have an answer.”

“But would you have fought him, Dean?” the thing insists, looking down at Dean until Dean’s sure he can feel his father’s gaze boring into his soul. He tilts his chin up, tries to muster some defiance, but there’s nothing defiant about the answer.

“No.”

“No,” the thing repeats, satisfied. “Like I said, Dean. You haven’t really changed at all. ”

After that, it quits talking for a while. The whole time, Dean’s trying not to choke, trying not to fall over, which isn’t easy, because the creature’s holding Dean’s left arm above his head, digging the knife into his palm, licking the blood that wells up. After a few minutes, Dean’s hand starts to tingle, losing circulation, and the liderc forgets itself for the first time. Not waiting for Dean to finish the job, it strikes him down, leans over him. Dean forgets himself, too, and for a second he fights as hard as he can—kicks and rolls and tries to fling the thing off him. But it’s too strong. Whatever it wants from Dean, it’s getting. Shame and fear trickle like ice through Dean’s veins. Finally, he gives up, goes still.

As soon as Dean stops fighting, the liderc opens the cut in Dean’s wrist wider, digging the knife deep enough to draw a spurt of blood. Dean lies there with his eyes closed, stays perfectly quiet while the thing feeds. By the time it’s finally done, he’s lightheaded. He scrambles to his feet as soon as it lets him up, empties the contents of his stomach into the bushes.

When turns back around, the thing wearing John’s face is watching him again. Slowly, deliberately, he wipes Dean’s blood from his lips with the back of one hand. “Not so bad, was it?”

Dean glares. He can’t tell if the black buzzing static on the edges of his vision is the night, or something worse. In the tent, Sam shuffles, groans.

“He’s gonna get loose,” Dean warns the creature in a low voice. “Doesn’t matter how tight I tie him. You want me all to yourself? Fine. But I say we take this somewhere else. Someplace real damn far away from here.”

The thing eyes him. “Nice try, Dean,” it smirks, “but this place has a lot of memories. Places have a power of their own. A kind of magic.”

Without even laying a hand on Dean, the liderc sends another wave of memory coursing through him. He’s on his hands and knees with the sleeping bag under him, Ethan’s hand on the back of his neck, and he’s hard. Even with the blood trickling down his wrist, even though it’s not really Ethan, even through the haze of grief, he’s turned on. Likes it.

The memory fades. Watching Dean closely, the creature waits for some kind of response. Some counterargument. Dean tries to focus.

“There’s the other spot.”

“What other spot?”

 _You know what spot, you son of a bitch_ , Dean thinks furiously. _Just wanna make me say it_.

“Spot where you left me,” he finally says.

“Don’t you mean the spot where I _found_ you?” John’s voice is full of hidden laughter.

“No, douchebag,” Dean hisses. “I mean the spot where you left me all tied up for him to find. You wanna take me there, I’ll go. But I’m not staying here.”

The thing thinks for a moment, and all Dean can hear is his heart hammering, Sam’s restless shuffling. Then the creature nods.

“Walk,” comes John’s brisk command, and Dean stifles a sigh of relief.

 _It worked_. In spite of everything he never saw coming—even with how much it all hurts. Even with the fear lying coiled in his chest, even with the voice in his head whispering, _this isn’t over yet_. In spite of all of it, Dean can’t help feeling a small, quiet surge of triumph. The pieces are in motion. The first step’s complete.

_Get it away from Sammy. Get it alone._

Pushing down the sudden, irrational urge to smile, Dean strides into the trees. He’s aware of every snapping twig underfoot, conscious of every knee-aching step, always listening for the silent creature following close behind.

They pass through a clearing, heading east. Off to the right, Dean spots Orion’s belt—three stars stretched out into a perfect line. It’s a warning. A reminder.

 _The hunter_. He lifts his chin, walks faster.


	9. Chapter 9

“Hey. Asshole. We there yet?”

Dean keeps his voice gruff, tries not to sound as lightheaded as he feels. He’s been stumbling downhill for what feels like hours, focused on nothing but the dim circle of light in front of his feet. Trying not to fall. Sometimes, when clouds cover the stars and the air might as well be thick, black tar for all Dean can see, he pulls his lighter out, holds it in front of him. But the flame’s faltering, running on empty.

In answer to Dean’s question, the creature just laughs.

“I’d forgotten that about you, Dean.”

Dean scoffs. “Forgot what?”

“Your childishness. Your impatience. Always ready to act, never willing to wait.”

Dean smirks. “Whatever, man. We can march all night. Fine by me. But we keep this up much longer, there won’t be a meal left in it for you. Hell, won’t even be a midnight snack.”

The remark earns Dean a sharp shove from behind. He stumbles, catches himself on a branch, and for a second he thinks he's fine, but then blood wells up at his wrist, rushes down his fingers. _Cut’s too deep_ , he thinks blearily. _Gonna drain me here and now if I don’t get a handle on it_. Wincing, he grabs his wrist with the other hand, squeezes hard.

“Listen, Dean. Hear that?”

“Huh?” he grunts, glaring. But then he does hear it: the hushed drip of gently trickling water. It’s not a river. Not even really a stream. Just drops, clear and shiny, seeping out of the rock. Just mud-filled, stagnant pools, and the smell of rotting roots. Dean feels his steps slow. The next wave of dizziness might be from blood loss, might be something else.

_Suck it up, man. Keep it together. Same place, sure. But that was then. This is now. It's different._

But Dean barely has time to feel the liderc's grip on his shoulder before he's lost. The images hit all at once, an unintelligible rush of bite-sized playbacks. Trees overhead, black limbs thrashing in the dark wind before the storm. _Big storm,_ Dean remembers _. Flash floods down in the valley. Mudslide. When Dad finally found a road that wasn't blocked, and we made it back into town, power was out. Had to shower in the dark._ Dean tries to ground himself in these useless details, attempts to label the memory for what it is-- something done. Past. Gone.

He fails. The thing's better than Dean-- too full of magic, too good at its own game. The wave of memory swells, breaks, and for a second Dean's thirteen again. There's no color in the world. The only light's the pale, cold, near-constant flicker of white lightning through the thrashing trees, mirrored in still water. The only sound's the rending sheet-metal roar of distant thunder. The only scent, the earth. For a second, Dean feels ropes cutting into his wrists, tastes tears in the back of his throat. In the present, he's safe, standing, dry. He knows that. Still, somewhere deep and uncontrollable inside Dean's head, he's helpless. Water laps at his chin. Rises past his lips.

_Crap._

Wrenching his shoulder out of the liderc’s grip, Dean stumbles forward. He tells himself he can keep going. That none of it, the dizziness, the blood, the raw edges in his chest, can really be that bad. In the end, though, it’s just a few more steps—three or four staggering paces before Dean trips over a big, oldfashioned flashlight lying half-covered in the brush.

“Goddamnit,” he growls, picking himself up. “First the jacket. Now I’m gonna have grass stains.”

From somewhere in the dark, the creature gives one of John’s disappointed sighs. “Turn on the light, Dean.”

Dean shakes his head, tries to smirk. “Nah. No offense, but it’s like I told this waitress in Tampa—”

_Oof._

The blow to his ribs knocks the breath right out of him. _Crap_ , Dean thinks through the gasping pain. _Thing's fast. Getting faster._

"That's enough back talk," John orders quietly.

Groaning, Dean straightens, smiles, looks his father in the eye.

“You might look like Dad, but you sure don’t hit like him. Come on. That the best you got?”

Dean thinks the thing’ll hit him again—wants it to. But instead, John just gazes intently at Dean, his bearded face barely visible in the dark. As if of its own accord, the flashlight at Dean’s feet flickers to life, its yellow beam painting long, eerie shadows in the undergrowth. All at once, Dean knows exactly where he is.

“Place bring back memories?” the thing wants to know.

Dean shrugs. “Not really.”

It’s a lie. The clearing’s overgrown, crisscrossed with the husks of fallen trees, but it hasn't changed. Not really. There’s the muddy, leaf-littered bank. The half-dried-up creek bed, reduced to motionless pools. The buried tangle of upturned roots where the creature wearing Ethan’s smile once lashed Dean’s wrists together, looped a rope around his neck to hold him face down in the mud. _Don't forget something like that,_ Dean thinks grimly _. Can't_.

And the creature knows it.

“That’s a shame,” it grins. “How ‘bout a quick refresher?”

Dean chuckles. “I have a better idea. How bout you take that flashlight and shove it up your—“

But suddenly the creature’s behind him, arm levered across Dean’s throat. Struggling’s useless. The thing’s too strong. Pretty soon, black spots dance at the edges of Dean’s vision, keeping time with blood roaring in his ears. A thought enters his mind, floats aimlessly behind his skull. _I’m gonna die. All these years later, and I’m gonna die here anyway._ When the pressure finally eases up and air floods back into Dean’s lungs, it’s only John’s grip keeping him upright. Sharp pain— _that damn knife again_ —flares at the back of his neck, and then, in the blink of an eye, the light of the present vanishes. There’s only the feel of mud, the suffocating darkness.

Dean feels the ropes tighten around his ankles, tries not to cry out. Then the thing in Ethan's body walks slowly around, comes to stand in front of Dean, so Dean's eyes are level with Ethan's mud-scuffed boots.

“Either you’ll drown,” it says, crouching in front of Dean and tilting his chin up, “or else your daddy’ll come in time, find you here. See what a sorry mess you are. He’ll know, Dean. He’ll know everything. And when he does…” Ethan smirks, rocks back on his heels. “I dunno, Dean. What do  _you_ think he’ll do?”

Dean doesn't attempt an answer. Just focuses on breathing. Unsatisfied, the thing with Ethan’s eyes wrenches Dean’s chin up harder and backhands him, so his lip starts bleeding fresh. Then, once it has Dean’s attention, it kisses him. Pulls back, runs its hands over his narrow, shivering shoulders. Hits him again. Laughs.

By that point, whatever pleasure Dean might’ve felt is long gone. He’s exhausted. Terrified.

“Please,” he whispers, voice cracking with swallowed tears. Pins and needles prick in his bound hands, his feet. “Please, don’t.”

Ethan steps back, gazing down at Dean. “Don’t what?”

Staring down at the mud, Dean struggles for words. “Just…Don’t go.”

Ethan takes another step backward. “Why? Why would I stay?”

“I’ll do anything. Whatever you want.”

At this, the creature lets loose one of Ethan's careless laughs. It sends a chill through thirteen-year-old Dean's bones deeper than the mud. “Don’t you get it, kid? You’ve already given me everything. Been years since I’ve eaten this good. But you know what happens after a real good meal, Dean?”

Dean sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, shakes his head.

“When you’ve had enough, you don’t want any more. I’m done here. Had my fill. Least, for now.”

Dean knows he should give up. Shut up. Put his head down in the mud and die. But he can’t help it.

“You’re wrong,” he mutters.

“What’s that?” Ethan smiles. “I can’t hear you.”

Dean takes a shaky breath, mustering up his last shred of defiance. “You've got it wrong. My dad won’t know anything. He’ll come find me, and maybe he’ll wonder, but he’ll never know what happened. And me? I’ll forget all about this. Forget all about you. ‘Cause you know what? You’re not Ethan. You never were. You’re just some stupid monster.”

At the end of this little speech, a dark silence fills the dripping space. Thunder rumbles closer than before, driving a cool wind in front of it. Slowly, the patter of early morning rain steals across the forest, starting quiet, growing louder. When it finally arrives in the clearing, the drops sting like cold needles on Dean’s bare back and thighs, chilly as the mud beneath him. Way up in the treetops, a mockingbird begins to sing.

“You’re stubborn, kid. I’ll give you that.”  Ethan’s mud-muffled footsteps circle around behind so that, try as he might, Dean can’t crane his neck to see what's coming next. “And you might be right. Daddy might not put the puzzle pieces together. Might not really want to. Guess I’ll have to stick around, put the finishing touches on before I go.”

Something steely like hope resurfaces, a hard pit in Dean’s chest. _That’s right_ , he thinks. _Stay. Keep on staying_. He squeezes his eyes closed tight and waits for whatever's coming, sure it’ll be worse than anything that’s come before. But when it comes, it's nothing. Just a light touch, softer than the rain—the gentle trail of Ethan’s warm hand up the back of Dean’s thigh.

“I’m gonna miss you, Dean Winchester. You know that?”

They're Ethan’s words, from that last day together. Dean swallows, tries not to feel it, tries not to think.

Then Ethan pushes one finger inside Dean, and, after everything, that hurts. Dean tells himself it's okay, though. He's used to it, now. He tries to think about something else: the sound of the storm, the cool, gradual progress of the water up, up, up his chest, crawling up his throat until he can’t lift his chin high enough and his neck aches with trying.

Another sharp pain—the point of a knife tracing shallow lines between his shoulder blades. Not a surprise, either. Any second, Dean expects to feel Ethan’s lips against his skin. He hopes they’ll stay there until the dark blue shadows in the rain-speckled water turn a lighter shade. Until the stars wash out with dawn. _Almost that time_ , he tells himself. _Has to be_. A voice in the back of his head isn’t so sure, though. _Dad wouldn’t have to guess_ , it says. _He’d never lose track of time. He’d know, down to the second_. Still, Dean can’t help hoping. He lies still and imagines morning light and waits for the thing to feed again.

But Ethan doesn’t bend down to lick the cuts he’s made. Not at first. Just keeps moving the knife over Dean’s skin, cutting barely deep enough to sting. They're strange cuts—weird angles, close together.

 _Should've known what it was up to_. _Sammy would've known right off the bat. Why'd it take me so damn long to figure out what those cuts were for?_

And suddenly, Dean's aware again. He knows it's not real, knows it's a memory. Not happening now. Like a lucid dreamer mid-nightmare, Dean tries to open his eyes, tries to pull himself out of the memory, but the dark won’t break. There’s still mud clinging to his skin, still the water rising higher, higher. Dimly, Dean feels his real body hit the ground, but he’s not with it. He’s facedown, bound and alone, the static of the rain the only sound for miles. He’s suffocating.

Drowning.

Dying.

“Alright, Dean,” the thing with John’s voice murmurs in his ear. “You can come back, now.”

The dark flickers, recedes.

Heart hammering, Dean rolls onto his back, draws in long, gasping breaths. Above him, the flashlight beam illuminates leafless branches. Beyond that, there’s nothing. Just black sky. For a long time, all Dean can hear is the ragged pounding of his own heart. The mud's gone, and so's the water, but the fear... the fear's as real as it was then. 

 _Crap._ Dean swallows, struggles to slow his breathing.

“You called out for help, after I left,” the creature finally observes. It’s kneeling beside Dean, watching him closely.

“Hell yeah, I yelled,” Dean pants. “So would anybody.” He tries to sit up, but John places a firm hand on his chest, pushes him back down. 

“I was listening, Dean. You yelled for three, maybe four minutes. Then you went real quiet. Thought maybe you'd drowned, and I was getting real disappointed. But you hadn't. Still could've called, kept screaming for Daddy. Why’d you stop?”

“Waste of energy. My Dad could track a wendigo through a blizzard. I knew if he was still out there, still kickin', he'd come.” Dean tries to sit up again. Again, the thing places a hand on his chest, pushes him down. Then it shifts so John's gigantic frame is leaning over him, looking down. Studying Dean. Deciding.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, the creature in John's skin draws the knife from its pocket, flips the blade idly in one hand.

"Roll up your sleeve," it orders. Dean doesn't move to obey. With a look like disappointment, the creature pushes Dean’s sleeve up so his shoulder’s exposed, keeping one hand on Dean's chest. It’s a sure, matter-of-fact touch, John’s touch, and for a second Dean’s not even aware the scene’s changed again.

But it has.

He’s fifteen, maybe sixteen, sitting on the counter of some crappy hotel bathroom, feet propped on the toilet. And there’s pain—burning, stinging, nauseating pain. A glance in the mirror behind him shows bright red blooming across his ribs, soaking through the white of his t-shirt. It’s all over his hands, too. _Or maybe the stuff on my hands isn't mine. Shifter? Werewolf?_

Dean doesn’t remember.

“Come on, Dean. Let me see.”

Wincing, Dean peels the fabric away from the wound, pulls his shirt over his head. The mirror catches his uninjured side-- boyish ribs, smooth skin, but a layer of lean muscle, too. _I look like him. More every day._ There's surge of pride accompanying the thought. Still, when the ripped up skin comes into view, Dean turns away from the reflection quick, averts his eyes. Hissing through his teeth, he raises his arm again so John can examine the clawed up mess. There’s a tense silence.

“Jesus,” Dean finally mutters. “That bad?”

John shakes his head. “You were slow out there. Distracted. You gotta be smart, Dean. Anticipate. Act faster.”

Dean clenches his jaw. “Yes, sir.”

After a second more of poking and prodding the wound, John sighs, motions for Dean to put his arm back down. “This needs stiches. Lotta stitches. There’s a hospital about a mile out—”

But Dean interrupts. “What would _you_ do? I mean, if it was you the son of a bitch shredded?”

John allows a small smile. “Think you already know the answer to that, son. You’ve patched me up more times than I can count. Not exactly kosher, but it does the trick. Cheaper.”

Dean nods, short and decisive. “Okay. Guess it’s your turn to get some practice in. Just, uh, use the new kit, will you? Old needle’s bent weird, probably hurts like a bitch.”

The corner of John’s mouth twitches up in an almost-smile. “That it does.”

Then he’s all business—setting out the lighter, the needle, the nylon thread, the alcohol. As soon as the bottle clunks onto the counter, Dean snags the whisky with his good arm, downs a gulp. Wipes his mouth the back of the bad hand. Takes another swig. John doesn't say anything. He does it all same way he’s done it a hundred times before, the same way Dean’s done it for him: No fuss. No problem. He doesn’t ask if Dean’s sure. Doesn’t warn him how much it’s gonna hurt, try to talk him out of it. Just takes Dean at his word. _I can handle it. I’m good_.

And Dean’s glad, because if there’d been a chance to back out, he might’ve taken it. John flicks the lighter open.

“Hold this.”

Dean sets the bottle down, does as he’s told. Watching the needle pass back and forth through the flame, he tries to keep fear off his face. When John's guiding the thread through the eye, he almost can't watch. Then everything's ready. Already white-faced, Dean raises his arm, bares his bleeding side.

“You know the drill,” John grunts, leaning down so he’s level with the wound. “Hold still. Take longer if you don’t.”

Dean nods. He knows exactly how this has to go. After all, he’s learned from the best. _Dad never makes a sound,_ Dean reminds himself _. Never loses his cool. Not even those first few times, back when my sewing game was total crap_.

The needle makes contact, and Dean shifts his focus to breathing—sucking long inhales through his nose, exhaling quietly through his mouth, counting. _One down. Two_. _Three_ —

But then there’s a loud knock on the bathroom door.

“Dean?” It’s Sam’s voice, high and worried.

“Little busy, Sammy,” Dean calls back.

“Dean, there’s blood out here. What’s going on? Where’s Dad?”

“In here,” John grunts, impatient. When Sam shows no sign of leaving, he straightens up, yanks open the door. He leaves the needle hooked in Dean’s skin.

“Thought I told you to stay down at the library until five?”

Sam, who’s still wearing his backpack, ignores this. His eyes lock onto Dean, take in all the blood. “Dean? What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. Dad’s gonna patch me up. Be good as new tomorrow.”

“I thought you had a math test today?” Sam’s forehead wrinkles. Dean makes himself laugh.

“Dude, how you think I got this?” He gestures to his mangled side, winces. “Hell of a substitute teacher. All I did was lean back in my chair and—”

“You didn’t go to school. Did you?”

Something about the way Sam says it makes Dean look down at his bloodstained jeans instead of meeting his brother’s eyes.

“Nah, man. Dad needed my help.” He glances over to his father for support, but John’s attention is on Sam. There’re storm clouds gathering in their father's eyes-- a warning the younger Winchester ignores.

“Okayyy,” Sam shakes his head, bewildered. “So when’re you gonna take that test? I can help you study, Dean. I’m in the advanced class.”

“He’s not taking any test,” John breaks in, his voice low, final. Dean swallows.

“Dean? What’s he talking about?”

“It’s okay, Sammy. Dad and I discussed it,” he tries to explain, “and he thinks… I mean, school’s not the best fit for me. I can do more good out there.”

Sam’s getting his stubborn look, now. “No. No, Dean. You can’t quit school.”

“Yeah, dude,” Dean snaps, surprised at the buzzing in his head, the sudden anger in his own voice. “I can. Just leave it alone, okay?”

Sam blinks, takes a step back.

“Fine. You, uh… you guys need anything?”

“I’m good,” Dean mutters, just as John growls, “How bout a little peace and quiet?”

The door slams, and Dean’s not even sure which one of them shut it—John, or Sam. He raises his arm again for what feels like the hundredth time, grimaces. Tries to stay still. Only once John’s fully absorbed in stitching again does Dean let himself stare up at the ceiling, blink the tears back down his throat.

It’s twenty-two stitches. Dean doesn’t make a sound.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to those of you who've been commenting! I added some new tags to this fic, so please take note. This chapter contains references to suicide, including dialogue in which a creature attempts to manipulate Dean into taking his own life. If there's any chance reading this chapter could harm you in any way, please skip it. I'll do a recap with anything you need to know in the notes before the next chapter, so everything still makes sense. :)

“Wake up, Dean.”

Like a bandage ripped from a wound, the scene in Dean’s head tears away, and he finds himself back in the present. He’s staring up at dimly-lit branches, wet dirt and leaves clinging to his back, pulse pounding in his throat. When he reaches across to his throbbing shoulder, his hand comes away wet. Fresh blood on the creature’s lips fills in the rest of the story.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” he manages to grunt. The thing smiles.

“Enjoy that one?”

Dean grimaces. “Sure. This is all one family-sized, extra-crispy bucket of fun.” He laces his voice with sarcasm, but the thing sees right through it.

“You don’t have to pretend, Dean,” it says in John’s low, matter-of-fact tone. “That night hurt. And I don’t just mean the stitches. Admit it. You still went back to school after that, a day here and there when your father was out of town, just to keep Sam happy. But you knew you’d never graduate. When John put his foot down, that was it. For such a tough guy, Dean, you sure do roll over easy.”

Dean knows he should chime in with some angry retort. Some witty comeback. But his head’s spinning, and it suddenly feels like too much work. He just waits. The thing looks pleased. Watching Dean closely, it demands, “You remember, don’t you, Dean? What you did the day after your dad stitched you up?”

Dean shrugs, pushing himself into a seated position. The truth is, he doesn’t remember. Everything for a couple months after the scene in the bathroom is a pleasant sort of blur. _Probably ’cause of the liquor_ , he realizes, thinking back. _That was it. First time he let me drink the hard stuff. Started carrying one of his old flasks after that. Dad must’ve known, but as long as I stayed sober enough to hunt, he never said anything._

In answer to the creature’s question, Dean gives the only fuzzy detail he can conjure up. “I dunno. All I remember’s sitting around watching _Days of Our Lives_ for a couple days while he found our next hunt.”

The thing shakes its head in wonder. “Fascinating. You… you actually think you’re being honest right now, don’t you?”

Dean glares. “I _am_ being honest. This was right before they switched out the dude who plays Roman. Those were the real glory days. See, Laura wakes up on a park bench and can’t remember how she got there, and then Kristen’s acting all shady, because she knows that actually, Laura—”

The creature cuts him off.

“The funny thing about you, Dean, is that just by strolling through your mind once, I understand more of your life than you do. You treat your mind like some old storage unit no one ever visits. You put things in boxes. Stack the pieces all wrong. Rearrange the furniture up there, so to speak. Then I go in, and…poof. Put things in order. That’s all I have to do. Just point out what you already know. What you’re trying to forget. The subconscious mind likes to bury things, and your subconscious is a little subber than most people’s, if you know what I mean.”

Dean scoffs. “Nice theory, Sigmund. You got a couch somewhere in these bushes?”

But the thing won’t let go so easily. “Answer the question. What did you do, Dean? The day after the memory I just showed you?”

“Sorry, man,” Dean smirks. “Hate to disappoint, but I got bupkis.”

“No.” The thing shakes its head. “That’s not good enough.” This time, John’s hand simply reaches out and touches Dean’s temple—one finger resting against Dean’s clammy skin. And then, at once, Dean does remember. He grits his teeth.

“What is it, Dean?”

 _Keep the thing talking. Keep it going_. Dean lets out a long breath, makes himself release the words.

“I…I binged daytime TV, sat around the motel, like I said.”

“But that wasn’t all. Was it?”

Dean shakes his head, pulling away from the creature’s touch. “No,” he admits. “I... uh, I walked down to Sam’s middle school. Pine Grove Middle. He had a project in the science fair. There were lots of people. Parents. Families.”

“Where was your dad?”

The creature’s voice is low, soothing. Dean searches for the right words. They’re coming too quick, too easy, like they’ll roll off his tongue without his permission. “Busy,” is what he finally decides on. “Dad was researching a new case. Skinwalker out in Arizona.” Coming back to himself for a second, Dean adds, “Saved two little girls, by the way. Little more important than some crap science fair project.”

The creature doesn’t blink, but it must sense Dean holding back, because it shifts to crouch behind Dean, its hand cool on Dean’s neck. Another surge of eerie calm spreads from the point of contact.

“So your dad skipped the science fair,” John’s low voice clarifies. “But not you. Not Sammy’s big bro. Even all beat up like you were that day, you went.”

Dean clears his throat. “Wasn’t that bad.”

“Do you remember what Sam’s project was about?”

Like magic, the answer floats into Dean’s head. “Mold. He’d been saving old food for weeks. Almost got us kicked out of our motel stashing these little Ziploc bags all over the room. Bit my head off when I figured they were trash and threw one out.”

“That’s nice.” The creature casually wraps its hand around Dean’s wrist, guides it to his mouth. Dean lets it. Almost doesn’t notice. “And while you were walking around this science fair, Dean, how were you feeling? Was it like you promised Sammy the night before? Were you _good as new_?”

Dean clears his throat. “Course not.”

“No. In fact, you threw up in a potted plant when no one was looking. Isn’t that right?”

“That was probably the booze. Still new to the stuff.” Dean smiles fondly. But then something else comes to him, and it’s like he can’t stop running his mouth. Like the words don’t belong to him anymore. “Sam… Sam was pissed, actually. He could smell it on my breath. Said… Nah.” He catches himself. “Doesn’t matter what he said. He was just a kid.”

But this, apparently, is just what the liderc’s been waiting to hear. It digs its fingers into the wound at Dean’s wrist, drawing a fresh trickle of blood. At the same time, a barrage of memory assaults Dean’s senses. There’s the burn of cheap whisky going down his throat. The sweaty, sticky friction of the bandage rubbing underneath his flannel shirt. The gasoline-and-hot-asphalt smell of the middle school parking lot. All at once, Dean remembers exactly how it felt, waiting there, watching family after family climb out of their mini-vans and station wagons, watching them wave to the people they knew. Watching them fall into loose-knit gaggles of gossiping parents and nervous kids, all climbing the steps of the auditorium together. He remembers, with vivid clarity, the pit in his stomach at the thought of walking up those steps alone. But he’d climbed them anyway. He’d wandered row after row, staggered past poster after poster, trying to find Sam’s table. He can feel it again—the nauseating pain in his side, stitches pulling with every step.

Dean remembers walking up to Sam’s display board, brushing past admiring teachers and other kids’ parents to stand beside his little brother. And he remembers the sharp dive his stomach took when Sam wrinkled his nose, stepped back, and said what he’d said.  

_“Just go away, dude. You’re embarrassing me.”_

Dean opens his eyes, blinking furiously. The liderc licks its lips.

“Good,” it says softly, replacing Dean’s wrist at his side, running its hands along Dean’s shoulders. “That was good.”

Dean tries to collect himself. Tries not to feel the pit gnawing in his stomach. _After all_ , he thinks, _it wasn’t such a bad memory_. There’d been no blood and guts—or very little, anyway. No death. None of the fear or pain he’d been expecting. He glances backward at the creature, forcing an amused smile.

“Sure, man. If that’s what you’re into. It’s like those douchebags with the fancy wines. Can’t say I really get it, but, you know, more power to you, I guess.”

The creature’s grin sends a shiver down Dean’s spine. “Oh, Dean.” It shakes it head again. “You don’t even know what that _was_ , do you? That feeling you just let me taste? Could it be you don’t have the words to describe what you feel? You know what they call that, Dean? Emotional vocabulary. Yours is severely lacking.”

Dean scoffs. “You know who you sound like? Every chick I’ve ever banged. Not a good look, man.”

“Try it,” the thing insists, unfazed. “How do you feel?”

Dean sighs. There’s no point stalling, though _. I’ve got it on the hook_ , he tells himself grimly. _Can’t quit now_.

“Right this minute? If I’m gonna be honest, doc… I feel like ripping your guts out and choking you with them.”

“Anger,” the thing observes calmly. “What else?”

Dean smirks. “You really wanna know what else?” Sensing the thing’s eyes on him, he straightens his shoulders. “I’m remembering how my dad turned your little buddy into a crispy critter. And I’m thinking how, after all these years, I’m gonna do the same thing to you. What would you call a feeling like that?”

Even before he’s finished talking, Dean’s bracing himself for a blow, waiting for the knife to bury itself in his skin. But nothing happens.

“You’re avoiding the question, Dean. That feeling you got when Sammy told you to go home. The one you just remembered. What do you call a feeling like that?”

Something catches in Dean’s throat, preventing speech. Patiently, the thing answers for him. “You don’t even have to say it, Dean. I know. You felt worthless. Underneath everything, you _always_ feel worthless. Dean Winchester, Daddy’s little soldier. Sammy’s big, tough brother. But deep down, you’ve always known you’re not strong like Daddy. Not smart, like Sam. No will of your own. You’re useless. Powerless. Weak. Never able to make things right. From the time you were four years old, you’ve been trying to fix your fucked up family, Dean. And you’ve failed, every single time.”

Dean draws a quiet, shallow breath, lets it out.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to admit you’re not the man you like to think you are. I just want you to _see_ , Dean.”

Dean scoffs. “See what?”

“See yourself. Look in the mirror. Come to terms with what you really are. What you really want.”

“Why?” Dean grunts, tearing a strip of fabric from the hem of his shirt, fashioning it into a makeshift bandage for his wrist. “What’s the point?”

“The point, Dean,” the thing says, grabbing Dean’s chin, making him meet John’s eyes, “is this: When you see yourself fully, when you take in every ugly detail you keep buried, I won’t have to kill you. When I’m finished with you, you’re going to take your own worthless life. You’ll die knowing exactly how weak you are. How useless.”

Dean chuckles. “So that’s it, huh? That’s what you’ve been waiting all these years to say? You’re gonna make me kill myself? Sorry, man. Not gonna happen.”

The creature smiles. “How can you be sure? You’ve stood on that ledge before, Dean, more times than either of us can count. Protest all you want. Say you haven’t thought about it lately, that’s it’s not the number one thing always lurking in the back of your pretty little head. But we both know it’s a lie.”

Dean resists the urge to wrench his shoulders out of the creature’s grip. “Whatever. Thinking about it’s just that. Thinking. Pulling off the real deal? Come on, man. That’s a different story. You go ahead,” Dean insists. “Take a look in my head. I mean, what the hell. You’ve been through half of what’s up there already. You look real close, you’ll get it.”

“Get what, Dean?”

Dean clears his throat, turns around to meet the creature’s gaze. “I won’t insult your intelligence. You’re a creepy-ass motherfucker, but you’re right. There’re times I want to end this fight. Times I want it bad. I’m tired. You can smell it, right?” Dean shifts toward the liderc, putting weight on his wrist, and when the blood wells up through the bandage, hunger flashes in the creature’s eyes. Dean goes on, ignoring it. “See, there’s this hole in me, and it just keeps getting bigger. And yeah. Sure. Every single goddamn _day_ ,” he growls, “I want to lay down. Take a rest. But you know what? We all want things. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. You want to ice me, take your revenge. I want to come home to a house with a white picket fence and some ScarJo lookalike waiting to kiss me on the cheek. But there’s one big difference between me and you.”

“Oh?” John cracks a smile. “What’s that?”

Dean lifts his chin. “The difference between you and me—the reason I’m gonna walk out of here wiping your ashes off my shoes…it’s real simple. But I don’t wanna spoil the punchline. So I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Dean’s speech is met by a short silence. He can feel the creature sizing him up, trying to unravel the riddle. _Please work_ , he finds himself thinking desperately. _This has to work_. It’s almost a prayer. But not quite. Finally, the liderc speaks.

“Whatever advantage you think you’ve got, son… I hate to break it to you, but it’s worth about as much as this right here.” The creature grabs a handful of dirt and leaves, lets it rain back to the ground. “My motives aren’t as simple as you think. I’m not here for revenge. Sure, I would’ve liked to pull your daddy apart piece by piece for what he did to my offspring. But you had nothing to do with that, Dean. I bear you no grudge.”

Dean wrinkles his forehead. “Then why? What’s all this for?”

Throwing back John’s head, the creature laughs. “For you, Dean,” it finally says, smiling beatifically. “It’s for you. All of this,” the creature gestures to Dean’s bleeding wrist, the damp dark of the forest, “is for the boy I met all those years ago. The boy with the tangled up mess of a mind. The kid who tasted better than anyone I’ve ever had, before or since. And I can tell you, Dean, these things really do improve with age.”

“Hold on, now,” Dean forces a chuckle. “That’s real flattering, but—”

“You’re special, Dean,” the liderc interrupts. “Special, in the sense that you’re not special at all, and, more than most people, you know it. See, everybody’s got the drive. You’re just uniquely bad at suppressing it.”

“Think you’ve got the wrong guy,” Dean grunts. “I love driving. No suppression there.”

“This isn’t about cars, Dean,” the thing explains patiently. “It’s about the deepest, most desperate need human beings have.”

“Hang on,” Dean interrupts. “This gonna be a monologue? Cause it’s sounding a hell of a lot like a monologue to me.”

The creature eyes him coldly. “Would you rather I drained you here and now?”

Dean pretends to think about it. “Real Catch-22 there, but…okay, man. I’ll bite,” he finally sighs, pulling himself along the ground to lean against a tree trunk. “What’s this deep, dark desire we’re all tripping over ourselves to fill? Money? Sex? Booze?”

“Looking at how you’ve chosen to live your life, I suppose those would be natural guesses,” the creature smiles indulgently. “But no. It’s the human need for annihilation, Dean. Freud called it the death drive. Human beings want to destroy themselves. Of course, that’s not _all_ you want. Evolution gave you instincts for survival, instincts that keep you alive, even when you don’t want to be. But underneath it all, there’s the need to be nothing again. To feel nothing. Way, way deep down, you all want to die.”

Dean quirks his lip up in a half-smile. “Sorry, man. That’s a pile of crap. If we all want death so bad, why don’t you see people offing themselves all over the place?”

“In a way, you do. Fun fact, Dean: human beings are the only species to commit suicide. Animals don’t. Not in the true sense of the word. They get stressed, even die of it, but they don’t make a conscious decision. Don’t choose when the end should be. And my kind never do. Did you know that, Dean? The creatures you hunt, the ones you call monsters, we’re saner than human beings. All we care about’s survival. You, on the other hand… Your whole lives are just one big, long period of denial. You distract yourselves. Entertain yourselves. Keep yourselves from taking that plunge with empty words and platitudes. But underneath it all, there’s always this need. You know, Dean. You know you’re not worth it. You know _life’s_ not worth the pain it costs.”

Dean scoffs. “Fine. Let’s say you’re right, and every human on the planet’s got the mind of a lemming buried way deep down. Let’s say we’re all ready to throw ourselves off that cliff. What’s it matter? Most of us never go full-on kamikaze. And what’s so special about me?”

“I already told you, Dean. The world’s full of two kinds of people. There’re the ones who bury the drive so deep, it might as well be gone. Or, even worse, they find a way to fill it with other things. Love. Learning. Art. Sunday night football. Those types bore me. They taste like artificial cherry flavor. Sweet enough, but nothing like the real thing. Gives me a headache.”

“Huh. You should get that checked out. What’s the other type?”

“The other type’s what I like to call damaged goods. For whatever reason, these people can’t push the drive all the way down. They’re the ones I stalk, the ones I take. I play my cards right with those folks, I get a little taste of the best stuff in the world.”

“So this… this death drive. That’s what all this is about?”

A slow smile spreads over the creature’s face. “Now you’re catching on. There’re other flavors of human, of course, and I enjoy them all. But the longing for darkness…that desperate, shameful, unsung _need_ … that’s what I live for, Dean. And you’ve got it in bucket loads. When I sensed you all those years ago, I thought to myself, it’ll be a miracle if that kid lives another year. But here you are. Still dripping my favorite flavor. Still hanging on by your fingernails.”

“So what you’re saying is, I’m your cherry pie.” Dean smirks at the thought. The creature laughs one of John’s low, approving laughs.

“You’re more than that. All these years, I’ve been waiting to taste you again. So you can see why I’m not very interested in letting you win this little game. Or wasting a drop.”

With that, the creature’s done talking. John’s dark form settles over Dean, his hulking silhouette blocking the light from the flashlight, heavy knees coming to rest on either side of Dean’s thighs. One of John’s large, callused hands settles on Dean’s throat, not yet a threat, but a warning.

“Give in to it, Dean,” the low voice whispers, breath tickling Dean’s ear. To Dean’s surprise, he feels the handle of the knife pressing into his open palm, an offering. “I’ve already done half the job for you. Let yourself go. Give me what I want, and this’ll all be over before you know it.”

Something flutters in Dean’s stomach, but he grits his teeth, spits out the words he’s rehearsed over and over in his head.

Two words.

Simple words.

“Make me.”


	11. Chapter 11

Hell comes next.

The second the liderc touches his shoulder, Dean knows what’s happening, where he is. He knows because he can’t pull in more than a shot glass worth of air at a time—doesn’t have anything resembling lungs left to breathe with. When he lifts his head and looks down, his skin’s in ribbons. Jagged ribs poke through the bloody mess that used to be his chest, and he can see his own heart lying still, like a butchered bird in a broken cage. By all rights, Dean knows he should be dead. But he’s conscious. Awake. And it’s not over.

Alastair’s face swims above Dean, daring him to scream. Which, of course, he can’t. Not with the hole in his throat where his voice box used to be.

 _It’s not real_ , Dean tells himself, trying to gather his thoughts. _I’ve got Hell in my head. Of course the son of a bitch is gonna use that. No chance this was ever gonna go any other way. But it’s over. Been over for a long time_.

Except, even as he thinks it, Dean knows it’s not entirely true. There’s something different about Hell. There always has been. Most memories feel like points on a line—pushpins stuck in a wall, dates and years neatly labeled. In the midst of each flashback, there’s always a sense of what came before, an awareness of what’ll come after. But there’s no pinning down this memory, no single point on the line where it belongs. It _is_ the line—the whole thing, present, past, and future.

 _That’s Hell_ , Dean remembers with a sinking feeling. _In the pit,_ _it’s always now_. _No yesterday. No tomorrow. No time at all_.

And no time to think. Soon, all Dean can do is feel. Taste. Hear. Smell. See.

Everything’s red— the warm blood pooling in the hollows of his eyes, the flickering light. Existence tastes and smells of iron. Only Dean’s body is real, and, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop it feeling everything. Can’t stop it writhing, struggling. Can’t stop the noises—choked whimpers, gurgles, animal groans. He’s in his body and out of it at the same time, feeling every cut, watching his own flesh split open. Pretending it’s movie doesn’t help anymore. Neither does closing his eyes. Wherever he looks, Dean sees himself shuddering under the knife, imagines the raw, shiny mess where his ribs used to be.

 _I can’t do this anymore_. The feeling washes through his veins like water, pools in his head. It’s the same every day, and this—this endless day could be any of a hundred. A thousand. _This is it. I can’t take any more._ But, like always, another thought follows, working its way to the surface like a splinter.

 _Yes, you can. You always do. You didn’t break yesterday. You’re not gonna break today_. For a moment, Dean wishes he could tell Alastair that. Wishes he could speak. As soon as he’s wished it, the wound at his throat heals. Gurgles turn to full-fledged screams.

Up to his elbows in blood, Alastair pauses.

“Ith it time, Dean? Ready to throw in the towel?”

Mustering his courage, Dean meets the demon’s searching gaze.

 _Go to hell_.

That’s what he should say. But something’s changed this time. Before he can get the words out, all the confidence drains away, leaving nothing but ashy dryness in Dean’s mouth. He turns his face away, coughs up what tastes like blood.  

“Oh well,” Alastair sighs, reaching to wipe the stain from Dean’s mouth. “Another time, then.” As quickly as they’d stopped, the demon’s hands deftly resume their work. Something deep in Dean’s chest breaks off with a sickening, twig-snapping sound. No amount of screaming helps.

“Ribs are my favorite bones. Did you know that, Dean? I’m partial to fingers, as you might’ve guessed,” Alastair admits, gesturing to one of Dean’s mangled hands, “but ribs… they’re something special. God thought so, too. This kind of thing was His idea, you know—breaking off pieces, borrowing from his first human to make his second. Poor, poor Adam.”

There’s another sickening snap. More screams. They’re sounding less and less like Dean’s own voice, more and more like a stranger’s—like someone more desperate than Dean’s ever been. Less brave. Cocking his head to one side, Alastair pauses again. For a moment the only sound’s the ragged, trapped-animal heaving of air through Dean’s ruined chest.

“What’th the matter?” Alastair wrinkles his forehead in mock concern. “No quip about holy morphine this time? I’m disappointed. You used to be so interesting. But I suppose all toys lose their shiny new paint after a few years. And you’ve been here such a very long, long time. I wonder, do you even remember who you are?”

Dean thinks back—or tries to. But it’s all in bits and pieces. Sunbaked leather. Glossy black paint. Chrome. The smell of gasoline. A large, callused hand weighing warmly on his shoulder.

 _Dad. That’s Dad_.

But, before Dean can savor it, the comforting weight’s gone. In its place, there’s just a voice— a voice so familiar, Dean’s agonized panting slows. _You’re my big brother_ , it’s saying. _There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you_.

_Sammy._

Dean grasps at the thread, but it’s gone before he can grip it, and then there’s nothing but blood and darkness. No one to hear if Dean calls out. No one to see. When the wave of nausea passes, Dean opens his eyes again to find even Alastair’s back turned.

“Hey,” Dean rasps. It comes out barely a whisper, but the demon hears it. When he straightens to face Dean, there’s a jagged-edged saw in his gory hands.

“Find your tongue after all?” Alastair’s brows rise in mild amusement. “What ith it this time? Let me guess. You’re about to suggest I take this saw and insert it into some unlikely part of my own anatomy. Hell really has made you predictable. Here I thought I’d have a front row seat to the best show in town,” the demon goes on, drawing closer, until the saw blade brushes Dean’s thigh, “but I have to say, Dean, I’m with your daddy on this one. You never fail to disappoint.”

Dean almost doesn’t hear the words, almost doesn’t care. His mind’s racing a million miles an hour, but there’s just one thought left. It’s buzzing, circling, almost sorted out into words. It’s _the_ thought. The one Dean’s never let himself conjure into existence before.  Now that it’s here, floating around his skull, there’s only one thing left to do.

Clenching his jaw, Dean looks anywhere but the glinting saw blade.

“Change of heart? Well, Dean,” Alastair smiles, “when you’re ready to talk, you know I’m always here.”

And just like that, it starts again.

Like always, Dean feels it all in vivid bursts—the claw-like catch of the saw’s teeth in the skin of his thigh. The first dragging, searing slice. The nauseating instant when the saw rakes bone. By the time both legs are gone, Dean’s stopped screaming. He’s too tired to open his mouth. As the demon begins wiping down the saw blade, the only sound’s the steady drip of blood to the floor, punctuated by Alastair’s own ragged breathing.

Dean knows somewhere in the back of his mind that this is the part where he’s supposed to talk. Beg for a rest he knows he’ll never get. Bargain for a better deal. Any other deal. But this time, the only words swirling in Dean’s brain are the ones he’s sworn he’ll never say. The ones he’s never even let himself think until today. He knows if he opens his mouth he’ll let them out—knows it with more certainty than he’s ever known anything in his life—so he bites down hard instead, closes his eyes.

“Come now, Dean,” Alastair prompts, smoothing Dean’s clammy forehead with one bloodstained hand. “Was that really so bad?” When Dean refuses to answer, Alastair sighs, waves his hand across what’s left of Dean’s body as casually as if he were swatting a fly.

In an instant, Dean’s whole again. Not a scratch on him. No pain. Fully clothed. Even the chains at his wrists and ankles vanish, leaving him unbound, untouched. This is how it always goes. Some demons go whole weeks without fixing their toys, but Alastair likes making Dean new again. It’s part of his game, and, normally, it’s the part that feels the best. The only part that’s not unbearable.

But Dean can’t help feeling like something’s gone wrong this time. Maybe the demon’s forgotten to fix something way, deep down inside his chest, because something still aches. Something’s still broken.

When Dean doesn’t move, Alastair leans over the table, running his hand over Dean’s forehead, studying Dean’s reaction. Then he pushes back from the table, a tiny, satisfied smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

“I suggest you take a moment, Dean. Really think it through,” the demon offers. “Once I have my shiny metal ducks in a row, so to speak, it’ll be time for round… what is it now? 10,549? But I mean, who’s counting?” The demon winks, then turns his back to Dean.

_Couple minutes. That’s all you got. Come on, man. Get it together._

Slowly Dean pushes himself into a seated position, legs dangling off the edge of the table, head bowed. Like the rest of the space, the shiny obsidian floor’s spotless again. Not a blood spatter or bone fragment to be found. Dean keeps his gaze down, trying savor the few seconds of relief, trying to think. All the while, the demon’s laying out his collection of now-glistening instruments in rows of silver anticipation. There’s the familiar clink of metal on metal, the shuffle of feet.

 _My name is Dean Winchester. My dad’s John Winchester. Mary Winchester was my mom. Sam’s my brother. I save people. I saved Sammy. That’s why I’m here. That’s who Dad raised me to be. And it doesn’t matter what this son of a bitch does to me next. That’s still who I am_.

_My name is Dean Winchester. Dad…_

Thinking makes Dean’s head spin, though. The more he tries to hang on to the words, the more the ground beneath him flickers in and out of focus. White knuckled, heart pounding, Dean grips the edge of the table. Something about the floor’s polished black mirror makes him feel unsteady, like if he lets go he might fall in, might never stop falling.

While Alastair readies the shackles at the table’s head, Dean studies what he begins to realize is his own reflection cast back by the floor’s glassy surface. The longer he looks, the deeper the pit in his stomach gets. Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s a trick. But when Dean looks harder, it doesn’t change: the eyes reflected in the polished floor aren’t green, like Dean’s own. They’re empty holes. They’re the bottomless, black eyes of a demon.  

“Be a good boy, Dean, and lie back for me,” Alastair croons, breaking the spell. Without thinking, Dean leans back, extends his arms upward, feels cold iron snap tight around his wrists. The second the bolts slide into place, he’s helpless.

But, for once, there’s no crushing weight of fear straddling Dean’s chest. No panic.  Nothing.

Alastair moves to the foot of the table, but the shackles meant for Dean’s ankles stay hanging, empty. It’s not time for that yet. Instead, the demon leans over Dean, hands traveling slowly up the same legs he’s sawed into splinters a thousand times. Soon, he’s unbuckling Dean’s belt, sliding his hand between the skin of Dean’s stomach and the cotton of his boxers.

Usually, Alastair takes his time. Usually, Dean does his best to ruin the demon’s hard-on with wisecracks and insults. It’s the way everything always starts. The easy part.

This time, though, Dean can’t find the words. Every touch feels raw, like his skin’s already flayed off. It doesn’t take long before Alastair notices.

“You’re not yourself today, Dean. I’d say you’ve run out of clever one-liners, but then, they never were very clever, were they? Same old thing, day and day out.” The demon shakes his head in mock exasperation, runs one finger along Dean’s jaw. “So what’s the matter? Don’t worry, Dean. You can tell me.”

Dean flinches at the touch. Swallows. Draws in a deep breath. And then there they are—those three words, just hanging in the air.

“I’ll do it.”

The words come out quiet, low, but the silence afterward is deafening. Time stands still. Finally, Alastair smiles a slow, broad, elated smile. When he speaks, there’s triumph in his voice, along with something else Dean can’t name.

“Oh, Dean. Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words?”

Dean glances away, clears his throat. Already, something sweet is spreading through his veins, erasing everything that’s come before. It’s comforting. Terrifying.  

“Screw you.”

Alastair chuckles, withdrawing an ornate iron key from his pocket. “We’re going to have so much fun together, Dean. When you see what I see… when you feel the _rush_ … well, there’s no going back. Not once you’ve had a taste.”

There’s a clinking, rattling sound, and the chains binding Dean’s arms fall to the floor. Dean sits up, rubs his aching wrists. Shifts to the edge of the table. Stands.

“Feels good, doesn’t it? What you’re feeling right now is the other side of the coin, Dean: the thing about pain most people don’t ever fully appreciate. There is _nothing_ ,” the demon whispers conspiratorially, “like relief. No God- or man-made drug half as powerful. The longer pain lasts, the better it feels when it stops. And the longer you’ve been helpless, Dean… well, the sweeter power starts to taste. You want that, don’t you, Dean? To finally be the one in charge? To look at those shackles and finally be the one holding the key?”

Dean swallows. Slowly, reluctantly, he feels his gaze rise to meet Alastair’s.

 _No,_ a voice in Dean’s head insists. _You can’t do this. Dad wouldn’t do this_. But it’s a small, weak voice. A child’s voice. It’s easy not to listen. Running his fingers over Alastair’s instruments, Dean realizes his hands aren’t shaking. _First time in a long time. Years, maybe_.

“You recognize them all, of course” Alastair observes, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder, like they’re old friends looking at photos together. “Every screw, every iron brand, every blade. All those years with no control. Entirely at my mercy.” The demon sighs, reminiscing. “We made so many memories, didn’t we? It was fun while it lasted. But you never have to feel those things again, Dean. Never have to hurt. Never have to submit to anyone.”

“No,” Dean agrees a little breathlessly. “All I have to do’s play your twisted game.”

Alastair smiles an open, brotherly smile. “Just wait, Dean. You’ll like it.”

Then, without warning, the demon snaps his fingers, and a girl appears on the table behind them. She’s crying—whimpering like a cornered animal.

“Well?” Alastair grins, hungry eyes taking in the girl’s disheveled clothes, admiring her terror. “The time’s now, Dean. The day’s here. You know what to do.”

Turning toward the girl, Dean sucks in a long, deep breath. With the cool air filling his lungs comes calm. Breathing doesn’t hurt. Nothing does. It feels good to be alive. Dean takes another step, draws closer to the shuddering form on the table.

 _You can’t do this_.

Dean tunes out the voice easily this time. Without even looking down at the row of instruments, he picks up a long, serrated knife. He knows where it’ll be before his hand finds it. Knows what to do. Slowly he approaches the girl on the table.

When he grabs the girl’s hair, the way her breath catches sends a rush of blood to his head. When he holds the knife to her throat and pushes her back against the table, her cry of fear unlocks something. It’s like scratching an itch. Like stretching his legs after a long drive.

The second he feels it, he knows it’s nothing new—knows the itch has been there all along.

_Ever since I was a kid._

And just like that, Hell vanishes.

Dean’s eight years old. He’s standing barefoot on tangled shag carpet, heart pounding in his ears. It’s hot in the room—so hot, Dean’s taken the thick blackout curtains down, opened the window. But the afternoon sun’s blazing in, and it’s a small room, even by crappy motel standards. Peeling yellow wallpaper. Some kind of cowboy theme. Two narrow twin beds take up most of the space—John’s made-up, unslept-in, Sam’s a tangle of sheets and blankets.

“Why can’t you fix it?” Sam whines from his chair at the flimsy card table. He’s sitting on a pile of pillows, can’t reach the tabletop without them.

“I already tried,” Dean mumbles over the sound of the sink running. “I don’t know how. And you heard what the lady at the front office said. The guy who fixes stuff like that won’t be here until tomorrow.” Crossing the room, Dean sets a glass of water down on the table in front of Sam. “Here. Drink this.”

“No!” Sam pouts, pushing the glass of water over so it spills across the vinyl table cover. "I wanna go outside!"

Dean's jaw clenches. “I already told you. Dad said we can’t go outside. Just watch your cartoons, okay?”

“No! I wanna go!” Sam insists, voice getting higher-pitched with every word. “I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna—”

“I said no!” Dean snaps, then takes a deep breath, sits down. “C’mon, Sammy. I wasn’t even supposed to open the window. If Dad gets home, I’m gonna be in big trouble.” Lifting his t-shirt over his head, he uses it to mop up the water pooling on the tablecloth, then drapes it over Sam’s shoulders, forcing a tired grin. “Look. You’ve got your own AC right here, dude.”

Sam stops whining for a second, almost stops scowling. But a second later, the frown returns. Clawing at the wet t-shirt, Sam flings it to the carpet. Dean leans back against the sticky vinyl chair-back, wipes sweat from his upper lip.

“Whatever, dude. I told you not to touch it. Dad said I’m the only one who’s allowed to change the temperature.”

Sam whimpers. “Meany.”

“I’m not being mean,” Dean retorts, “I’m being fair. Hear that?” Dean pauses, and for a second they both listen to the wheezing noises coming from the rusted metal box. “That’s what happens when you don’t listen to me. You turned it down too low, and you broke it. I can’t even go to the bathroom without you messing things up.”

“Daddy!” Sam screeches, the pitch so high Dean feels himself grimace. “I want Daddy. Daddy fix it.”

“Dad’s not here,” Dean retorts though gritted teeth. “He left me in charge.”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

Squirming out of his chair, Sam scrunches up his face and runs past Dean, going for the door. Dean grabs his arm, jerks him back.

“I _am_ the boss of you! And it’s not safe out there. There are really scary things, and… and…” Dean sputters, running out of words. Then they come all at once, like a flood welling up, spilling over. “Why can’t you _ever_ just do what I say? I’m supposed to be in charge, but you just do whatever you want, and it’s not fair. You think you wish dad was here, but you don’t. You don’t know. You’re lucky it’s me. ’Cause you know what Dad would do, if he ever caught me acting like a little brat?”

Sam blinks, quits struggling. He gives Dean a nervous, questioning look. Dean stands a little taller, takes a deep breath. Unbuckles his belt, begins sliding it through the loops.

“Dad knows what to do to keep us safe. That’s his job. And when Dad’s not here, it’s my job to keep you safe. Even when I was real little, if Dad told me to do something, I knew I had to do it. I mean, I really, really _knew_. If I don’t follow orders...” Dean trails off, swallows. Shakes his head. “But you just get to do whatever you want? That’s stupid. It’s not fair, Sammy.”

Sam’s eyes go to the belt in Dean’s hand, finally understanding. His eyes widen. Squirming, he drops to the floor, tries to crawl away. Dean holds him tight.

“I gave you an order. You didn’t do what I said. Now we’ll be hot and sweaty all night, and it’s all because you didn’t listen to me. You _never_ listen to me!”

“Sorry, Dean,” Sam wails. “Sorry!”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” Dean mutters, not letting go. The belt’s sticky in his hand, like it might slip out of his grip. “Dad says it doesn’t matter. You have to take the consequences. You _have_ to. It’s not okay to just do whatever you want. It’s not… it’s just…” Dean chokes, words faltering. “It’s not—”

“Sorry, Dean.”

There’s a flapping sound as the belt slides to the floor. Breathing hard, Dean releases Sam’s arm, leaving a sweaty red hand print.

“I’ll listen,” Sam whimpers. “Promise.”

Dean wipes sweat from his cheek. He’s not sure why he feels like crying.

“I know. I’m really sorry, dude. It’s okay.” Kicking the belt under the bed, Dean snags the overturned glass from the table, refills it at the sink. “Here. Sit down. Drink this. It’s good.”

Sam drinks. They watch cartoons. Cool night air seeps through the window screen.

Time begins to slow down. Eventually, Dean start to feel the tug of the present again, remembers it's a memory. Not just a memory- the wrong memory. Not the one the creature intended to show him. Somehow there was a link. Some kind of pathway between Hell and this room. Dean decides it doesn't matter right now. Soon it's Sam's bedtime. Even then, Dean stays- doesn’t let the liderc pull him out of the memory until he’s curled up on the floor at the foot of Sam’s bed, watching the neon orange “O” in “Old River Inn” blink off and on outside their open window.

On.

Off.

On again.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who's still reading, and especially to those of you who've left such lovely, thoughtful comments. You're the motivation behind every chapter!
> 
> Quick note: I know things have been really, really dark these past couple chapters, but I promise there's another good Ethan/Dean chapter coming, along with some other lighter stuff. Hope you enjoy. :)

Waking this time is different. For once, it’s not a jarring yank back to the surface. It’s a slow swim. There’s light above. Even before Dean opens his eyes, he’s aware of the familiar sting at his shoulder, the throbbing ache at his wrist. If anything, the pain’s sharper. This time, though, Dean finds he’s grateful for it. He lies still, eyes closed, listening to the beating of his own heart.  After a long time, he lets his eyes flutter open. Night comes into focus—branches high up and pale, the lichen on each twig thrown into sharp relief by the flashlight’s stark beam . The ground rests cool and solid underneath him. Overhead, a single bluish star contends with low, fast-moving clouds.

For what feels like a long time, Dean keeps his gaze trained on the night sky, watching that star disappear, reappear, off and on, just like the “O” on the sign. He can hear the creature breathing close by, feels it standing just outside the circle of light, knows its eyes must be boring into him, searching, recalculating. It doesn’t speak. Dean senses it waiting for whatever magic it’s using to take hold again. Meanwhile, the sky’s clearing. Somewhere very far away, a mockingbird begins to sing.

Staggering to his feet, Dean turns, finally, to face the creature. When he does, it’s John’s face he sees, John’s tall form half-enveloped in shadow. The look in the creature’s eyes isn’t an expression John Winchester ever wore. It chills Dean to the bone.

“Do you know what you’ve done?”

The creature asks it so softly, Dean almost doesn’t recognize his father’s voice. At the edges of his brain there begins a numbing fuzziness—a stronger dose than anything the creature’s used before.

“I…” Dean struggles to keep track of the words passing his lips, but it’s like counting sheep—too tedious. Easier to just let go. “I went… someplace else. A different memory. I was with Sam. Back when we were kids.”

“That’s right,” the creature agrees quietly. As it speaks, the words in Dean’s head blur together. Something inside him begins to ache, numbness spreading like poison. Like ice. “You disobeyed me. But I’m glad, Dean. I’m glad you showed me that memory.”

The forest swims in and out of focus. Dean staggers, catches himself on a tree trunk. Dimly, he recognizes the drip of warm blood down his fingers. “Why?” he grunts, closing his eyes to stop the world spinning. “What’s so great about it?”

“On the surface? Nothing,” the creature allows, drawing closer. “It wasn’t the flavor I’d hoped for. It was like… well think about it, Dean. Have you ever taken a sip of what your thought was water, only to find it’s something else instead—soda, or milk? That’s what you did. Pulled a bait-and-switch. Set me up for one thing, then gave me something else. It’s a pretty neat trick. I must say, I wasn’t expecting it. Not from the likes of you.” Here, the creature draws close enough to touch Dean—so close, Dean can feel its hot breath on his neck.

Dean opens his eyes, tries to smirk. “Oh, I’m full of surprises.”

The creature smiles back—a small, cold smile. “That’s right. Act like you planned it. But you and I both know it was a happy accident. A momentary escape. You saw that door open, and you walked right through it. Just like in Hell. You’re weak, Dean.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean manages to grunt. “If I’m so weak, why do you look like you just dropped your goddamn ice cream cone?”

The creature doesn’t answer.

Dean leans back against the tree, smirks. “Admit it. You screwed up. I wasn’t supposed to see that memory. But I did, and it changed things. You want me to say I hurt people? Want me to admit I broke in Hell? Fine. After thirty goddamn _years_ ,” Dean growls, “I broke. And maybe there was a part of me that wanted that all along. A part of me that gets off on it. But you know what?” Dean steels his jaw. “None of that matters. Your screwed up mind games won’t work. Not anymore. For every messed up thing you’ve shown me, there’s a flip-side. For every cowardly, disgusting thing I’ve done, there’s something else. I’ve hurt people, sure. In Hell. After thirty years of saying ‘No.’ But I never hurt Sam. And Dad?” Dean scoffs quietly. “Dad may’ve done a bang-up job of sticking it to the man in Hell, but you know what? When my father was alive…” Dean trails off, collects his thoughts. When the words come out, it’s like they’ve been waiting forever. Like they’ve been stuck way deep down in some vacuum inside him, gasping for air. “Dad cared about us,” he starts. “I know he did. But he cut me down to size every chance he got. I always had to be tougher. Faster. Braver. Smarter. For every monster I killed, there was some way I could’ve done it better. Saved more people. My best was never good enough. Not even frigging close. All I ever did was let him down,” Dean recalls with a bitter smile, “and you know what? I don’t even think he knew. Wasn’t really paying attention. He just cut, and cut, and cut away at me until there was nothing left. And Sam? Dad was never there for Sam. I was. Every single goddamn day. And even when I wanted to, I never cut into Sammy like Dad cut into me.” Dean draws in a deep, shaky breath. “So that part of me Alastair ripped into, the part that let me do those things… It was me, all right. Haunts me every day.” Dean raises his eyes to meet the creature’s shadowed gaze again. “But you know goddamn well it wasn’t all of me. If that person in Hell’s who I really am, then I guess there’s no difference between one soggy-ass French fry and a full-on happy meal.”

“Oh, but it was more than that,” the thing replies. “Who you became down there—that wasn’t some torture-twisted, alternate-universe version of Dean Winchester. That was _you_. All you. All those years of pent-up rage. Decades wasted following orders. Putting yourself last. Most people turn the drive for destruction outward. It’s what some call the will to power. It’s violent. Single-minded. That’s how your Daddy did it—how he coped. Took out his rage on every last spirit, every creature he hunted, every demon he could find. Trained you up like a soldier, obedient, unquestioning, because it made him feel strong. When Jess died, Sam learned how to do it, too—point the darkness outward, tear through life hell-bent on revenge. Demon blood was just the catalyst. Your brother’s real thirst went deeper than that. He wanted nothing more than to be in control. To win his fight. But not you, Dean. Hunting’s not an outlet for you. It’s a responsibility. You carry that emptiness inside you, feed it, never let it out to stretch its legs. You let it eat away at you, burn you up inside. Creatures like me, we can smell that void a mile away. Demons, too. Did you know they all celebrated, the day you sold your soul? One whiff of you, they knew. All Alastair had to do was flip that switch.”

Dean squints, tries to look skeptical. “So… What? I’m weak cause I’m not a controlling, power-hungry asshole?”

The creature smiles almost sympathetically. “Think about it, Dean. It’s the reason you broke in Hell. It’s the reason everyone around you spends half their time worrying about you, wondering how long it’ll be until you run headfirst into the next losing battle, sell your soul, throw yourself away. Bobby. Sam. Even your Daddy knew there was something wrong with you. You tried so hard, Dean—tried to be just like him. But that was the problem. He saw. Saw how hard you had to try. Copying his music, wearing his hand-me-downs. You know who tries that hard, Dean?”

Dean shifts uncomfortably, suddenly too warm with John’s body centimeters from his own.

“Someone who’s the exact opposite of everything he’s trying so hard to be. You’re nothing like your father, Dean. Sam’s more like John than you ever were. In fact, Sam’s so much like him, the two of them couldn’t be in the same room without a fight. But you… You’re the opposite of everything John stood for. You never needed revenge, never wanted to destroy anything. All you wanted,” the creature whispers, taking Dean’s face between his hands, “was to be loved. All your life, you’ve tried everything you can to satisfy that need. Thought you could earn John’s love with your obedience. Tried to win it from strangers by risking your life, throwing yourself in front of every monster to cross your path, buying a front-row ticket to the apocalypse. Tried to keep Sammy close, protect him, make him need you. And all the while, the emptiness kept eating you up inside. Can’t take it out on anyone, though, can you, Dean? Because if you do, if you lash out, they’ll all leave you. And who will love you then?”

Dean tries to scoff, looks off into the darkness. “You don’t know jack about my family. Dad had his moments, sure. Wasn’t the touchy-feely type. Dumped a lot of crap on me I wasn’t ready to handle. But me and him and Sammy… we’ve always had each other’s backs. Hell,” Dean forces a laugh, “my dad sold his soul to bring me back from the dead. Gave his life for mine, just like I did for Sam.”

In response, the creature’s eyes flash with something like triumph.

“You’re sure of that, aren’t you? Sure that, underneath it all, even after how he treated you, way deep down somewhere Daddy loved you?”

Dean scoffs. “Wouldn’t put it like that.”

“But that’s what you’re saying,” the creature presses.

Dean swallows. Doesn’t deny it.

Instead of offering a counterargument, the liderc simply reaches out one of John’s callused fingers, traces Dean’s jaw. As it does, Dean loses track of what he was saying. Loses track of everything except the sensation, the closeness of his father’s body, the warm breath on his cheek. John’s hand trails down Dean’s throat, but there’s no impulse to pull away. No instinct left at all. Just the fuzzy, numb, icy chill like cold water rising, rising.

“You remember, don’t you? He found you over there.” The creature points toward the muddy pools, the tangled, upturned roots. “I was waiting in the dark. Listening. Tuned in. I saw the whole thing just the way he saw it, felt everything Daddy felt. So you see, Dean, I’m uniquely capable of telling you how your father felt about you. Better than anyone in the world, I know whether your loyal puppy-dog routine earned you even an ounce of his respect. Whether the nasty surprise I gave him changed the way he looked at you. Aren’t you curious, Dean? Don’t you want to know?”

Dean tries to say something, but the words slip away. The skin between his shoulder blades starts to prickle.

Then, suddenly, he’s back in time, trudging through driving rain.

It’s morning, but the sun’s sealed off behind a thick gray wall of clouds, and whatever birdsong there might’ve been is too soft to hear over the near-constant roll of thunder echoing through the mountains. Immediately, Dean knows it’s not his own memory. Something feels foreign—the rub of his boots on his feet, the swing of his arms at his sides, the burning in his throat. They’re not his feet, not his boots, not his arms. And it’s not the burning of tears, or shame, or guilt. It’s anger—rage so complete, there’s nothing else.

In the back of the stranger’s head, there’re other memories—bits and pieces of time, recent, out of sequence. Dean sees Mary’s face streaked with mud, wet leaves clinging to his mother’s damp cheeks. Then, with no time between, he sees a pile of wet ash, and he understands.

 _This is Dad. Dad’s memory. He just fried the son of a bitch that came after him, and now he’s looking for… for something. Needs to find it, before he can leave_.

It takes Dean a second to realize that _something_ is him.

Soon, too soon, Dean starts to recognize the landmarks in John’s path. Everything looks different in the rain-dimmed daylight, but there’s no mistaking the shred of Dean’s jacket caught on a branch, no missing the echoing calls for help. The cries go on for a few minutes, during which John picks up his pace, running toward the sound with fury burning in his veins. Then the calls stop. John slows down, tries to pick up the trail.

It takes him longer than Dean would’ve thought. _Right there_ , Dean feels like yelling. _Look. I’m right down there_. But he’s mute. This isn’t his body. As John stumbles through the undergrowth, points his feet downhill, Dean can’t do anything but watch.

Then, emerging from a thicket, he sees it. Sees himself, wrists and ankles tightly bound. Shivering. Naked.

When he catches sight of Dean, John stands still. Seconds stretch out into minutes. Thunder rumbles, farther away every time.

 _I didn’t hear him coming_ , Dean remembers, searching his own thoughts. _I didn’t know. The water was rising, and I thought for sure I was dead, but I wouldn’t let myself call for help. I thought… I thought I was about to die. And all the time, he was standing there. Just standing there._

John stands like that, out of Dean’s line of sight, for what feels like forever. He’s just staring at the livid, dripping red marks on Dean’s back—five evenly spaced letters, so fresh they’re still bleeding. Dean recalls the itchy dripping sensation, can almost feel his blood mingling with the rain, sliding in warm tracks down his sides.

That’s what Dean remembers: the stinging pain, and the shame, and the crawl of the water up, up, up, past his lips, so high he can barely hold his head up.

But all John sees is the word.

 _Ethan_.

Dean feels the gears turning, and then comes the moment— the sickening instant when the pieces fall into place. All at once, John _knows_.

From his vantage point inside the memory, Dean feels his father’s heart skip a beat, feels the sick pit of disgust forming, pooling like dirty water in the man’s stomach. John shifts from one foot to the other. Absently, still staring at the wounds on Dean’s back, he fingers the strip of leather he’s picked up in the woods—the clue that led him here. When it falls from his fingers into a shallow pool of water at his feet, John doesn’t move to pick it up. He just wipes the rain from his beard with the back of one hand. The water’s rising steadily, close to covering Dean’s nose. John doesn’t move.

Only when Dean coughs and sputters does John pull his boots out of the sucking mud beneath them, coming to stand where Dean can see him.

“You kill it?” John wants to know. Dean coughs again, lifts his head long enough to speak.

“No, sir.”

John’s jaw tightens. His head’s full of a buzzing Dean can’t identify. It’s not just anger. Not just disgust. There’s something else there, too—something Dean’s never felt himself, doesn’t recognize. As soon as Dean’s hands and feet are free, he feels himself begin to slip back into his own memory. Pins and needles prickle in his fingers, his heels, his knees. John tosses a pile of muddy clothes at Dean’s feet— t-shirt, jacket, jeans. They’re the clothes he shed back at the campsite, back when Ethan’s fingers were tugging the fabric over his hips, his head. Now Dean struggles with the wet material until, finally, he’s clothed again. Still shivering, he glances up for the first time, notices blood trickling from a wound at his father’s neck.

“Did you… did you find the other one?” Dean asks, fighting to keep his voice even.

John nods.

“Is it… is it dead?”

John’s stony silence is answer enough. For a second Dean’s sure his father wants to say something, but the moment passes. Clearing his throat, John turns, strides off in the direction Dean assumes is the right one. As he walks, his boots leave deep prints in the soft earth.

Dean follows.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading, and thank you, especially, to those of you who've commented. I don't always reply, but please know that I do read your wonderful feedback over and over and treasure every word! I promise this will be the last super sad chapter for a little while. Well, okay, next chapter might be dark-ish too (you'll see why at the end), but after that I'm planning more Ethan flashbacks, so... yay? :)

Dean opens his eyes. At first, he’s not sure where he is. Then he’s sure of everything all at once—the yellow light, the fuzzy blue-black beyond it, the sticky static of the air. Pushing off the tree he’s been leaning against, he makes a valiant attempt at standing free. The creature watches with laughter in its eyes.

“Whoa, there, tiger. Better save your strength. After all,” it rumbles in John’s low tones, “you’re walking out of here. Right, Dean? Still think you can beat me?”

Dean tries for a half-smile, makes it a quarter of the way. “Oh, I don’t _think_ anything.” Gritting his teeth, he adjusts the bandage at his wrist, tightening it where the creature had pulled it loose. “You’re a real messy eater, you know that?”

The thing makes a small, dismissive sound, Dean’s blood still wet on its lips. “I get a bit…overenthusiastic. That last one in particular… well, it imparted a flavor I’ve dearly missed. I feel so many things through so many people, but everything I make them feel, they’ve felt before. It’s not often I get to taste surprise.” Turning Dean’s face toward him, the creature studies Dean’s reaction. Dean struggles to keep his expression neutral. “Your father’s memory of that morning,” the liderc goes on in a musing tone, “that's a puzzle piece you never had before. Doesn’t it hurt, Dean?”

Dean scoffs quietly. Doesn't answer.

“It’s alright to admit it.” The creature’s voice deepens, begins to savor of John. “It’s alright, son. You can tell me.”

But Dean jerks his jaw out of the thing’s grip.

“Nah. Sorry to disappoint.” He smiles a mirthless half-smile, stares into the dark. “But then, that’s all I ever did, right? Disappoint my dad?” The creature opens its mouth to speak, but Dean cuts in. “No. You know what? Save the monologue. There isn't anything you’re gonna tell me I don’t already know. Truth is, I knew how my dad felt about me. Spent my whole life knowing. After that morning, he never looked at me the same. But it isn’t what you think.”

The creature smiles patronizingly.

“Come on, Dean. We both know the truth. Your daddy looked at you, pictured you in that boy’s arms, and all he felt was disgust. No way around that, kid. No padded box in your head where you can pack that fact away.”

Dean shakes his head, amused. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

The creature’s smile never falters.

“Get what, Dean?”

“Me and Dad. You think just cause you were here for one night when I was thirteen, you’re some kind of expert? How Dad treated me, how hard he pushed me, all of it was about keeping us safe. Keeping Sam safe. Sure, the idea of me spreading it for a dude…” Dean clears his throat, continues. “Hell yeah. It freaked him out. Dad wasn’t exactly the progressive type. And he was pissed, too. Mad as hell I’d let the thing get away. Angry I’d been lying to him, sneaking around behind his back. In another life, though… If we’d had any kind of life at all, Dad would’ve gotten used to it. Would’ve come around to the idea.” The monster raises its eyebrows in polite disbelief, but Dean plows on. “The way we lived, though…Dad couldn’t afford all that lovey dovey, acceptance crap. There was a way things had to be. A way _I_ had to be. And when he saw me like that… when it really hit him how easy the thing got me, how quick I caved…” Dean thinks back, puts himself in the memory again. It’s like trying on someone else’s worn-in shoes. But then there it is, clear as day—the feeling of John's that’d gone nameless the first time around. Dean lets out a shallow breath, looks the creature in the eye. “My dad was a hunter. And when he saw me like that, the hunter in him must’ve been scared out of his mind.”

The thing scoffs. “Scared? Your daddy? I know a thing or two about human emotions, Dean, and what your father felt that night—”

Dean interrupts again. “He figured it meant I was soft. Since the time I was real little, he’d been trying to toughen me up, make sure I was ready for whatever was out there. Hunting’s not a solo gig. Not really. Dad needed to know I had his six. Even before he let me ride shotgun, he made sure I knew how to shoot. If things went south and some ugly-ass wendigo took him out, I was gonna be it. Last line of defense our family had left. Dad spent half his time worrying ’bout revenge. Other half he spent worrying ’bout us. And, when it came right down to the wire, I was it. Every fight, I was his backup. Anything happened to him, I had to be strong enough. Had to know enough to protect Sam. He’d had his doubts before, but when he found out…” Dean takes a strangled breath. “When he found out about me and Ethan… it must’ve scared the crap out of him.”

“Sure,” the creature smiles. “Cause, when it comes right down to it, you were John Winchester’s soldier. Not his son. Not his partner. Not his friend. Just a grunt. A machine. A broken one, at that.”

But Dean shakes his head again.

“No?” The creature’s tone is mocking, condescending.

“No,” Dean repeats, coming out of the daze. “Dad needed me in fighting shape, sure. But that wasn’t all I did. Wasn’t even most of it. Truth is, I wore more hats as a kid than a friggin… person who wears a crapton of hats.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” Dean trails off, looks the creature up and down. “Well, how bout I show you?”

Before the liderc can object, Dean places his hand on John’s warm, muscled arm and lets his mind travel back.

It’s the middle of the night. Dean’s ten or eleven. From his place on the ratty couch by the door, he can hear the slow, steady rasp of his father’s breathing. The man’s lying half-on the nearest bed, half-off it, clothes puke-stained and disheveled.

 _Stumbled in the door like that_ , Dean remembers. _Two AM. School night_. Dean knew enough to roll his father onto his side immediately, check his pulse. Everything after that’s always a waiting game, though. Staring up at the smoke detector on the ceiling, Dean counts the ragged breaths.

 _One. Two. Three_.

Every time he wants to lean back into the folded up blanket he’s using for a pillow, he pinches himself hard and keeps on listening. Around six o’clock, Dean rustles Sammy out of bed.

“Don’t wanna go to school,” Sam mumbles. “Tired.”

“Here,” Dean insists, thrusting clean pants and a shirt into Sam’s arms. “Shower time.”

Too sleepy to reply, Sam just nods and shuffles away, closing the bathroom door behind him. Steam begins to seep out from underneath. By the time Sam shuffles back out smelling like waxy motel soap, Dean’s pouring the milk for his little brother’s cereal. It’s Fruit Loops. Sam empties the whole box, shaking out even the rainbow colored dust at the bottom. Then it’s time to go.

Outside, it’s freezing. With Sam’s small, gloved hand tucked in Dean’s bare one, they start the long walk to school. There’s no sidewalk—just the frostbitten grass along the side of the two lane highway leading into town. Passing cars blind Dean with their high beams. Putting himself between Sam and the road, he squints to keep sight of the curb.

When the elementary school parking lot comes into view, Dean bends down, pretends to tie his shoe. Spotting a friend, Sam lets go of Dean’s hand. Dean glances from Sam to the kid across the parking lot—a normal-looking kid in wire-rimmed glasses and a puffy blue windbreaker.

“You’re good,” Dean murmurs, jabbing his chin in the kid’s direction. “Go. I’m right behind you.” Sam’s face lights up. He takes off without a backward glance, leaving Dean free to make the walk back to the motel without answering any questions.

Cleaning up Sam’s breakfast, Dean notices the lukewarm, rainbow-crumb-filled milk left at the bottom of the bowl. He drinks it all.

When everything’s cleaned up the way John likes it, Dean finally turns on the TV. He keeps the volume low—just barely loud enough to hear. Every once in a while, he gets up, watches his father’s chest rise and fall just long enough to convince himself.

 _He’ll wake up. Real soon. Any second, now_.

The square beam of sunlight spilling through the window shrinks down to a rectangle, narrows into a glowing line, disappears. Noon comes and goes. There’s nothing left in the room to eat. Dean thinks about heading down to the gas station, swiping a bag of chips. In the end, he decides against it.

There’s some hospital show on TV. Between the long, white hallways and the drama, Dean finds himself losing track of time. Just when he’s starting to get bored, some hot girl Dean figures is supposed to be a main character dies on the operating table. When the surgeon shuts himself in a supply closet and covers his face with his hands, a salty lump forms at the back of Dean’s throat. He swallows, wipes his eyes with the back of one hand.

“Why aren’t you at school?”

Dean jumps at the sound of John’s voice.

“I… uh…” By the time Dean scrambles to his feet, his father’s sitting on the edge of the bed, looking none too steady. Dean racks his brain for an answer. “Skipped,” is what he finally decides on. His heart’s still racing the same way it used to every time he fired his father’s rifle.

John’s jaw clenches. “Skipped school so you could watch… what the hell is this?”

“It’s, uh…”

At this inopportune moment, the surgeon onscreen turns his tear-tracked face to the camera. Sugary indie pop plays behind the scene, and for a second Dean can imagine it’s the soundtrack to his own life, like maybe he and the surgeon are in the same TV show, and it’s almost time for a commercial break. As soon as it comes, though, the moment’s gone.

“Turn that crap off,” John murmurs, batting one hand in the direction of the TV. Dean fumbles for the remote, zaps the screen to black.

“Do you want… I mean, I can go get coffee,” Dean offers hastily.

John grunts, jerks his chin for Dean to come closer. “Gonna need something stronger. Hit the corner store,” he orders, pressing a damp, crumpled ten dollar bill into Dean’s hand. “Scotch. Donnie knows us. He’ll sell to you.”

Dean nods. Swallows hard. “I uh… I went down to the laundromat yesterday. There’re clean towels. Dry one on the rack’s yours.”

John half-smiles. Settling one enormous hand on Dean’s shoulder, he leans hard and, with a deep, ragged breath, heaves himself to his feet. Almost immediately he lets go, tries to stand on his own. Dean has to grab him to keep him from falling back onto the bed.

“It’s okay, Dad. You can lean on me,” Dean mumbles. It takes a second, but then John’s hand finds Dean’s shoulder again. This time, the pressure doesn’t let up until Dean’s deposited his father safely into the bathtub.

“Gonna be cold,” Dean warns, but John just grunts again, so Dean turns the tap. He can feel his father’s eyes on him, bleary and red and serious.

“You skipped school.”

It’s not a question this time, so Dean doesn’t answer. John’s eyes settle on the tarnished faucet.                              

“Son, I’m—”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Dean cuts in before his father can finish. “I’m gonna go. Be back soon.”

Steam starts to rise from the water, prompting John to lean back, close his eyes. Dean backs out of the cramped space, shutting the door behind him.

As soon as the bathroom door closes, Dean can feel the liderc’s magic tugging him back, like the slow, even pull of wakefulness after a long night’s sleep. _Not so fast, you son of a bitch_ , he thinks. Somehow, he knows the thing can hear him. It tugs harder, trying to yank him out, but the feeling’s different, now. It’s weaker. Getting farther away all the time.

Dean lets his mind wander until another memory surfaces. This time, he’s six years old. There’s a clear plastic shower curtain draped over the end of a motel bed, and John’s situating himself on top of it, leaving red smears every time he moves. Blood’s everywhere— coating John’s hands, his face, his clothes. When he shifts positions, a muscle in his jaw twitches. Sweat beads on the man’s forehead. Dean’s hands are sweaty, too—so slick, he almost drops the tweezers.

“Come on,” John grunts, gesturing with a lift of his chin. “Make it quick.”

“It’s gonna hurt, isn’t it?”

There’s a tremor in Dean’s voice. At the sound of it, John grimaces.

“I won’t lie to you, son. What I’m asking you to do… it ain’t gonna feel too good. Won’t look real pretty, either. But you have to trust me. See, sometimes, Dean, you have to hurt a man before you can help him.”

Dean takes a faltering step forward, but he stops a few feet shy of the bed. John lets a stream of air out through his nose, tries again.

“See this?” he demands, raising his arm, letting Dean get a good look at the wound. Dean flinches, turns to face the other way. “No,” John insists, his voice developing a hard edge Dean’s heard there before. “Don’t turn your back on me, boy. I said look.”

Dean turns back around. This time, he lets his eyes go out of focus, trying to look at the blood without really seeing it. It almost works.

“It’s just blood, Dean. It ain’t gonna hurt you.”

Dean doesn’t know how to explain that that’s not what he’s afraid of. The whole room’s spinning.

“I don’t think… I can’t do it. I’m really sorry, I just…”

“Dean,” John interrupts, “Come here.”

Dean steps forward until his waist is level with the edge of the bed. From here he can smell the metallic tang. Bile rises in his throat.

“Show me what you’re gonna do. Come on, Dean,” John prods, voice low and steady. Dean swallows hard, clears his throat.

“Uh… I’m gonna stick it… uh, stick it in, like this,” Dean barely whispers, holding the tweezers points-down.

“That’s right. You keep going until you hit the damn thing. Then you grab it, and you pull it out.”

Dean fights to keep his voice steady. “Why can’t you just, like… leave it in there?”

John looks Dean up and down, taking in the shaky hands, the shallow breathing. “That what you want? To leave it in?”

Dean shrugs, looks away.

“If you don’t help me get this thing out, son, it’s gonna keep working its way down inside me. Gonna keep hurting for a real long time. Might even hit something important. You don’t get this thing out, Dean, it could kill me. You understand?”

Dean feels tears pooling in his eyes, but he nods.

“You ready?”

Dean nods again. John gives  the briefest shadow of a smile, and then he grabs his belt off the mattress, wedges it between his teeth, lies back.  Slowly, Dean leans over his father. Plastic crinkles under his knees. Bracing himself with one hand splayed across his father’s chest, Dean presses the points of the tweezers into the wound—a hole the size of a quarter between his father’s fourth and fifth ribs. Slick blood coats the tips of Dean’s small fingers. When Dean starts pushing, John sucks in a quick breath.

It’s a quiet sound, almost silent, but Dean yanks his hand back like it’s a gunshot. The quick motion draws a grunt of pain from John.

“Sorry,” Dean mutters, dashing tears away with the back of his hand, grateful his father’s face is turned toward the wall. John grunts impatiently, not bothering to take the belt out from between his teeth. Dean gulps down a sob, takes a hiccupping breath. “Sorry.”

Then he tries again. This time, he doesn’t pull until he’s got the jagged piece of glass gripped between the tweezers’ prongs. He gets it most of the way out—so far out, he can see the top edge, wide as a butcher’s knife. But the blood-slick tweezers slip and scratch against the smooth glass. Dean’s heart starts racing, pounding out of his chest. _It’s not gonna come out_ , he thinks, panicking. _It’s gonna stay in there, and Dad… Dad’s gonna die_.

Dean doesn’t know what makes him do it. Setting the tweezers on the plastic-covered bed, he reaches into the wound with his fingers, feels the razor-sharp edge. It’s wet. A couple of times, his fingers slip. Finally, _finally_ , he gets a good grip and gives a slow, steady pull.

And then it’s over. The shard of glass is sitting on the plastic next to the tweezers, though Dean doesn’t exactly remember putting it there. There’s blood everywhere, but John’s spitting out the belt, straightening up.

“Got it,” Dean says unnecessarily, gesturing to the almost cartoonishly large piece of glass. John makes a low, approving sound.

“Looks like it,” he agrees. “Better wash up.”

While John streams a river of red down the shower drain, Dean wads up the cheap plastic curtain, pushes it down into the already overflowing trash can. Then, balancing precariously on a stack of Sam’s unreturned library books, Dean turns the tap, lets the water run down the sink until it goes warm. It’s only when he holds his hands under the water and begins to scrub that Dean feels the sting and realizes some of the blood’s his own. Deep cuts mark the places where his fingers slipped against the glass, and, as the warm water dissolves the rust-colored layer already drying on Dean’s palms, the slices in his fingertips begin to throb, sending fresh, bright red trails into the white ceramic bowl.

Dean lets the water run, resisting the urge to pull his hand out of the stream. The water hurts, but he decides there’s something nice about it. As soon as the blood wells up, it’s gone. Dean finds he isn’t afraid of it anymore—not shocked by the color, not sickened by the smell. _Maybe_ , he thinks, _that’s ‘cause it’s my blood, not Dad’s_.

He stands like that for a long time—almost as long as it takes John to shower. The trance breaks only when Dean realizes  it’s almost three o’clock. Binding a strip of leftover gauze around each of the injured fingertips, he sets about cleaning up the rest of the mess. Just seconds before Sam’s pre-k bus pulls up outside the window, Dean spots a corner of bloody plastic sticking up out of the trashcan. He crams it back down, throws a few clean, crumpled paper towels on top, until no hint of red remains visible.

Once Dean reaches this part of the memory, though, there’s a tug. The walls of the motel room start to fade. The yellow bus outside the window gets paler, the sun brighter. _Alright_ , Dean thinks, knowing the creature can hear. _Pull me out_.

And, just like that, he’s awake.

Dean blinks. This time, he’s still standing. Barely winded. A throb of pain reminds him the thing’s still feeding, though—taking more than Dean can spare. _Keep it together_ , Dean reminds himself. _Not out of the woods yet_.

Slowly, Dean twists his arm out of the creature’s grip, clamps his fingers down to stop the bleeding. The liderc releases without a fight, but it doesn’t back off—just stands in front of Dean, watching him.

“So?” Dean breaks the silence first. “You get it yet?”

“Get what?”

The thing’s voice sounds strange. _Not Dad’s voice. Not even a good rip-off_. Dean decides to take it as a sign that things are moving in the right direction.

“You were right about one thing. I’m not like my dad, now matter how much I wanted to be, no matter how much he wanted me to be. But I have never," Dean growls, " _ever_ put anything in front of my family.”

The creature studies Dean’s face carefully. “You raised your brother,” it finally says. “That was you, Dean. The real you. You took care of your reckless, alcoholic father. You cooked and cleaned up. Went without. Tried to be a wife. Tried to be a mother. And then you turned around and played your other roles. The dutiful son. The protective big brother. I see that now, Dean. I see how you tried to be everything to everyone you cared about. And if your daddy needed a cold-blooded killer, a blunt instrument, well, by golly, you’d be that, too, or die trying. You always had the best of intentions. But that’s not the question, Dean. The question is, did it make a difference?”

Dean clenches his jaw. “What do you mean?”

“Did it fix things? Did everything you sacrificed,” the creature whispers, drawing closer, “earn you the love you so craved? Did it save your father from his grief? Did it give little Sammy the childhood he deserved? When you gave _everything you had_ , Dean,” it croons, and now it’s Ethan’s voice, buzzing with magic, “was it enough?”

A wave of magic drives Dean to his knees. He barely has time to throw his hands out and break his fall before he’s sucked into another memory.

Dean opens his eyes to see a darkened street. Across the asphalt sits a house, boarded up, vacant-looking. Just like the first time, it takes Dean a second to place the memory.

Then it clicks.

 _I’m in Heaven_.

 _Guess again_ , a voice in Dean’s head answers. Somehow, he knows it’s the creature, eavesdropping. A streetlight flickers, goes out. From inside the vacant house, Dean can just make out the sound of raised voices getting louder.

And, finally, Dean understands. This is one of the scenes from Sam’s version of Heaven. That’s why it’s so familiar—why Dean’s seeing it this way, from the outside. Even in Heaven, though, it was a memory.

 _One of Sam’s best memories_ , Dean reminds himself, and swallows hard. _Best night of his life_.

But it’s one of Dean’s memories, too.  It’s the night Sam leaves for Stanford.


End file.
